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CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLYLE 



Conversations 



WITH 

Carlyle 



SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY, 

K.C.M.G. 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

743 & 745 BROADWAY. 

1892. 






^^ 



PREFACE. 

These papers were originally published in the 
Contemporary Review, chiefly for the purpose of 
presenting a more real, as well as a more human, 
picture of the philosopher of Chelsea than readers 
have been accustomed to of late. 

It has been no little gratification to me to 
receive letters from cultivated and thoughtful 
people, declaring that the conversations and corres- 
pondence, and, in some degree, the testimony of the 
author, had enabled them to accept anew an estimate 
of Carlyle which they had relinquished with pain, 
and to be assured that the nature and habits of 
the eminent man were not unworthy of his position 
as a teacher and leader of his age. 

They have incidentally served another purpose : 
they furnish a striking gallery of portraits, and 
an unique body of criticism on the writers of the 
century, by one of the most impressive painters of 
men that ever existed. The criticisms have some- 
times been called harsh and unjust, by impatient 



vi PREFACE. 

partisans of this or that personage ; but when 
they are dispassionately examined, they will be 
found, in almost every instance, to be just judg- 
ments, the exact truth uttered by a critic as com- 
petent to discern and express it as Bacon or 
Burke. The conversations have not been pre- 
maturely published ; it is more than forty years 
since the earliest of them were written, and it is 
not too soon to hear the judgment of such an 
expert on the men and things among which he 
lived. 

Critics of these papers have recognised that 
Carlyle is made to use the exact phraseology he 
was accustomed to employ. The conversations 
were, in fact, written down immediately after they 
took place, when his emphatic and significant 
language was still fresh in my memory. Readers 
who knew Carlyle will, I think, recognise the 
familiar cadence, and those who did not know him 
will have the means of realising his ordinary 
speech and method for themselves. 



Villa Marguerite, 

Nice, Alpes Maritimes, 
ApnV, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

PAGS 

Visit of the Young Irelanders to Carlyle . . i 

Letter describing the Visit 4 

First Letter from Carlyle to Gavan Duffy . 7 

Letter from Mrs. Carlyle 8 

Letter accompanying "Past and Present" . . 10 

The "Curse of Cromwell" 12 

Letters projecting First Visit to Ireland . . 15 

His Visit 22 

w. e. forster 23 

Letter of Felicitation 28 

Correspondence respecting his Second Visit to 

Ireland 33 

Second Visit commenced . . . . . .45 

Carlyle in 1849 .46 

Extracts from "Irish Reminiscences" ... 49 

His Opinion of Wordsworth 53 

Of Francis Jeffrey 55 

Of Browning and Coleridge 56 

Of Savage Landor 64 

Odds and Ends 67 

h 



CONTENTS. 



PART SECOND. 



An Irish Poor-House . 










• 71 


Dickens and Thackeray 










74 


Sir James Stephen 










78 


Sir Henry Taylor 










80 


The London Press in 1849 • 










83 


"Sartor Resartus" 










88 


Carlyle's Method of Work 










92 


Father O'Shea 










95 


A Kerry Homestead 










96 


Lady Beecher (Miss O'Neill) 




. 






98 


"Festus" 










lOI 


Irish History . . . 










102 


Henry VIII 










103 


The Chelsea Philosophy . 










105 


Buckle 










107 


Mazzini 










109 


Lynch Law .... 










III 


More Odds and Ends . 










114 


W. E. FORSTER 










117 


The Desolation of Westport 










118 


Repeal Pipes .... 










124 



CONTENTS. 



PART THIRD. 

PAGE 

The Irish Land Question in 1849 . . . .127 

Mr. Espinasse 131 

Mr. Linton 132 

"Wanted, a Few Workmen" 136 

Carlyle's Article in the "Nation" . . .146 

Latter-Day Pamphlets 151 

A Paper to Supersede Parliament — The First 

Tenant-Right Movement 154 

Cardinal Wiseman 163 

John Stuart Mill 166 

Dr. Murray and the '-'Edinburgh Review" . . 175 

Disraeli 179 

Specimen of an Harangue . . . . . .181 



PART FOURTH. 

A Friendly Proposal 187 

A Talk with Thackeray 192 

Edmund Burke 197 

The Malvern Water-Cure 199 

Sir Arthur Helps 200 

Apropos of W. C. Macready 203 

Letters from Macready 205 

Sir Henry Parkes 210 

Letter from Mrs. Carlyle on his Return from 

Australia 214 



CONTENTS. 



Stories about Lord P . . . \ . 

Mrs. Carlyle and the Dog-Stealer 
Two Stories of Carlyle's Good Temper 

George Sand . 

A Dispute with Carlyle 

Modern Art 

Mrs. Carlyle's Death 

Letters in Favour of Young Men in Australia 
Letter from John Forster .... 
Letter approving of Duffy's Ministerial Career 
Second Letter from John Forster 

Carlyle in 1880 

Carlyle's Death 



Index 



PAGE 

2X6 

219 

220 

222 
223 
228 
230 
232 
240 
242 
249 
252 
256 

257 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Portrait of Thomas Carlyle . . . Frontispiece 

Portrait of Mrs. Carlyle 187 

Carlyle on Horseback in Hyde Park . . .213 



/ 



CONVERSATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE 
WITH THOMAS CARLYLE. 



part 3First 

It is nearly half a century since I made the ac- 
quaintance of Thomas Carlyle. In the only frag- 
ment of her diar}^ saved from the flames, and 
published with her " Letters and Memorials," Mrs. 
Carlyle describes the visit of three Irish law- 
students, who were, moreover, intense Nationalists, 
to her husband in April 1845. She had seen 
Italian, German, and Polish patriots beyond count, 
but Irish specimens of the genus were altogether 
new to her ; and here were, as she says, " real hot 
and hot live Irishmen, such as she had never sat at 
meals with before." On the whole, they did not 
displease her, and one of them had afterwards the 
good fortune to be admitted by the lady to a frank 
and cordial friendship, lasting to the day of her 
death. Her description of her \asitors may still 
have an interest for inquisitive readers. Mr. Pigot, 
mentioned first, was son of the Irish Chief Baron, 
and afterwards became a successful advocate at the 

A 



2 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Indian Bar; the person whose name she could not 
recall was John O'Hagan (afterwards Mr. Justice 
O'Hagan, recently head of the Land Commission 
in Ireland) ; and the third visitor was the present 
writer. They were introduced to the Chelsea 
recluse by Frederick Lucas, then editor of the 
Tablet, afterwards Member of Parliament for the 
County of Meath, and one of the leaders of the 
first Irish party of Independent Opposition. 

" The youngest one, Mr. Pigot [says Mrs. 
Carlyle], a handsome youth of the romantic cast, 
pale-faced, with dark eyes and hair, and an * Eman- 
cipation of the Species' melancholy spread over 
him, told my husband, after having looked at and 
listened to him in comparative silence for the first 
hour, with ' How to observe ' written in every 
lineament, that now he (Mr. Pigot) felt assured he 
(my husband) was not in his heart so unjust 
towards Ireland as his writings led one to suppose, 
and so he would confess, for the purpose of retract- 
ing it, the strong feeling of repulsion with which he 
had come to him that night. 

" ' Why, in the name of goodness, then, did you 
come ? ' I could not help asking, thereby producing 
a rather awkward result. Several awkward results 
were produced in this ' nicht wi' Paddy.' They 
were speaking of the Scotch intolerance towards 
Catholics, and Carlyle as usual took up the cudgels 
for' intolerance. 'Why,' said he, 'how co7ild they 
do otherwise ? If one sees one's fellow-creature 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 

following a damnable error, by continuing in which 
the devil is sure to get him at last, and roast him 
in eternal fire and brimstone, are you to let him go 
towards such consummation ? or are you not rather 
to use all means to save him ? ' 

" ' A nice prospect for you, to be roasted in fire 
and brimstone,' I said to Mr, Lucas, the red-hottest 
of Catholics. ' For all of us,' said poor Lucas, 
laughing good-naturedly ; ' we are all Catholics.' 
Nevertheless the evening was got over without 
bloodshed — at least, malice prepense bloodshed, for 
a little blood was shed involuntarily. While they 
were all three at the loudest in their defence of 
Ireland against the foul aspersions Carlyle had cast 
on it, and ' scornfully ' cast on it, one of their noses 
burst out bleeding. It was the nose of the gentle- 
man whose name we never heard. He let it bleed 
into his pocket-handkerchief privately till nature 
was relieved, and was more cautious of exciting 
himself afterwards. 

" The third, Mr. Duffy, quite took my husband's 
fancy, and mine also to a certain extent. He is a 
writer of national songs, and came here to ' eat his 
terms.' With the coarsest of human faces, decidedly 
as like a horse's as a man's, he is one of the people 
that I should get to think beautiful, there is so 
much of the power both of intellect and passion in 
his physiognomy. As for young Mr. Pigot, I will 
here, in the spirit of prophecy, inherited from my 
great-great-ancestor, John Welsh, the Covenanter, 
make a small prediction. If there be in his time an 



4 , THOMAS CARLYLE. 

insurrection in Ireland, as these gentlemen con- 
fidently anticipate, Mr. Pigot will rise to be a 
Robespierre of some sort; will cause many heads 
to be removed from the shoulders they belong to ; 
and will ' eventually ' have his own head removed 
from his own shoulders. Nature has written on 
that handsome but fatal-looking countenance of his, 
quite legibly to my prophetic eye, ' Go and get 
thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand 
towards the great work of immortal smash.' " ^ 

The young Irishmen were greatly impressed by 
the philosopher and his wife. They did not accept 
his specific opinions on almost any question, but 
his constant advocacy of veracity, integrity, and 
valour touched the most generous of their sym- 
pathies, and his theory that under the divine govern- 
ment of the world right and might are identical, as 
right infallibly became might in the end, was very 
welcome teaching to men struggling against enor- 
mous odds for what they believed to be intrinsic 
justice. The letter of one of the visitors to his wife, 
written next day, sufficiently indicates their state of 
enthusiasm : — 

"We dined at Hampton Court yesterday, and 
spent the evening at Thomas Cariyle's. I have 
much to tell you of him, but more of his wife. She 
is one of the most natural, unaffected, fascinating 

^ " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle." Prepared 
for publication by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by J. A. Froude. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 5 

women I ever encountered, and O'H. and P. de- 
clare they would rather cultivate her acquaintance 
than the philosopher's. She is no longer hand- 
some, but full of intellect and kindness blended 
gracefully and lovingly together. Among a hundred 
interesting things which she told us, one was that 
Alfred Tennyson does not, as you supposed, tell 
his own story in ' Locksley Hall ; ' that he is un- 
married, and unlikely to marry, as no woman could 
live in the atmosphere of tobacco-smoke which he 
makes about him from morn till night. Of Miss 
Barrett she has a low — in my mind, altogether too 
low — an opinion. She says s/ie could not read 
her, and that Carlyle (so she pronounces his name) 
advised the poetess to write prose ! Oh, misguiding 
philosopher, to tell a dove not to fly or a swan not 
to swim ! 

" We had a long talk about Ireland, of which he 
has wrong notions, but not unkindly feelings, and 
we came away at eleven o'clock at night, delighted 
with the man and woman. She bantered the 
philosopher in the most charming manner on his 
style and his opinions, but philosophers, I fear, do 
not like to be bantered. He knows next to nothing, 
accurately or circumstantially, of Irish affairs. He 
has prejudices which are plainly of Scotch origin, 
but he intends and desires to be right, and when 
he understands the case, where could such an advo- 
cate be found before England and the world ! " 

A month later I had my first letter from Carlyle, 



6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and I am moved to publish it and a selection from 
those which followed, because they may help to 
realise for others the picture of that eminent man 
which remains in my own memory. It has been 
a personal pain to me in recent times to find among 
honourable and cultivated people a conviction that 
Carlyle was hard, selfish, and arrogant. I knew 
him intimately for more than an entire generation — 
as intimately as one who was twenty years his 
junior, and who regarded him with unaffected 
reverence as the man of most undoubted genius 
of his age, probably ever did. I saw him in all 
moods and under the most varied conditions, and 
often tried his impatient spirit by dissent from his 
cherished convictions, and I found him habitually 
serene and considerate, never, as so many have 
come to believe of his ordinary mood, arrogant 
or impatient of contradiction. I was engaged for 
nearly half the period in the conflict of Irish 
politics, which from his published writings one 
might suppose to be utterly intolerable to him; 
but the readers of these letters will find him taking 
a keen interest in every honest attempt to raise 
Ireland from her misery, reading constantly, and 
having sent after him, wherever he went, the 
journal which embodied the most determined re- 
sistance to misgovernment from Westminster, and 
throwing out friendly suggestions from time to 
time how the work, so far as he approved of it, 
might be more effectually done. This is the real 
Carlyle; a man of generous nature, sometimes 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 7 

disturbed on the surface by trifling troubles, but 
never diverted at heart from what he believed to 
be right and true. 

This was the first letter : — 

"Chelsea, May 12, 1845. 

" My dear Sir, — I am happy to hear that there 
is at last a prospect of seeing your book, which I 
have been in expectation of since the night you were 
here. Certainly I will look into it; my distinct 
persuasion is that you must mean something by it 
— a very considerable distinction for a book or man 
in these days. 

" I have likewise to thank you for your kind 
purpose of sending me the Nation, the first number 
of which, indeed, I find has safely introduced itself 
through the Rowland Hill slit in the door this day. 
As I have very little time, and especially at present 
hardly read any newspaper, it would be a further 
kindness if you now and then marked such passages 
as you thought would be most illuminative for me. 

" I can say with great sincerity I wish you well ; 
and the essence of your cause, well — alas ! if one 
could get the essence of it extracted from the 
adscititious confusions and impossible quantities of 
it, would not all men wish you and it right well ? 

"Justice to Ireland — justice to all lands, and to 
Ireland first as the land that needs it most — the 
whole English nation (except the quacks and knaves 
of it, who in the end are men of negative quantities 
and of no force in the English nation) does honestly 



8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

wish you that. Do not believe the contrary, for 
it is not true ; the believing of it to I'e true may 
give rise to miserable mistakes yet, at which one's 
imagination shudders. 

" Well, when poor old Ireland has succeeded again 
in making a man of insight and generous valour, 
who might help her a little out of her deep confu- 
sions — ought I not to pray and hope that Ae may 
shine as a light instead of blazing as a firebrand, to 
his own waste and his country's ! Poor old Ireland, 
every man of that kind she produces, it is like 
another stake set upon the great Rouge-et-Noir of 
the Destinies: 'Shall I win with thee, or shall I 
lose thee too — blazing off upon me as the others 
have done ? ' She tries again, as with her last 
guinea. May the gods grant her a good issue ! 

" I bid you, with many kind wishes, good speed, 
and am, very truly yours, T. Carlyle." 



From Madame also there came pleasant greet- 
ings : — 

" 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
Sept. 14, 1845. 

"My dear Sir, — Thank you emphatically for 
the beautiful little volume you have sent me, ' all to 
myself (as the children say). Besides the pro- 
spective pleasure of reading it, it is no small imme- 
diate pleasure to me as a token of your remembrance ; 
for when one has ' sworn an everlasting friendship ' 
at first sight, one desires, very naturally, that it 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 9 

should not have been on your Irish principle, ' with 
the reciprocity all on one side.' 

"The book only reached me, or rather I only 
reached it, last night, on my return home after an 
absence of two months, in search of — what shall I 
say ? — a religion ? Sure enough, if I were a good 
Catholic, or good Protestant, or good anything, I 
should not be visited with those nervous illnesses, 
which send me from time to time out into space to 
get myself rehabilitated, after a sort, 'by change 
of air.' 

"When are you proposing, through the strength 
of Heaven, to break into open rebellion ? I have 
sometimes thought that in a civil war I should 
possibly find my * mission ' — nioi! But in these 
merely talking times, a poor woman knows not how 
to turn herself; especially if, like myself, she 'have 
a devil ' always calling to her, * March ! march ! ' 
and bursting into infernal laughter when requested 
to be so good as specify whither. 

" If you have not set a time for taking up arms, 
when at least are you coming again to * eat terms ' 
(whatever that may mean) ? I feel what my husband 
would call ' a real, genuine, healthy desire ' to pour 
out more tea for you. 

" My said husband has finished his * Cromwell ' 
two weeks ago, then joined me at a place near 
Liverpool, where he remained a week in a highly 
reactionary state; and then he went North, and I 
South, to meet again when he has had enough of 
peat-bog and his platonically beloved ' silence ' — 



10 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

perhaps in three weeks or a month hence. Mean- 
while I intend a great household earthquake, through 
the help of chimney-sweeps, carpet-beaters, and 
other like products of the fall of our first parents. 
And so you have our history up to the present 
moment. 

" Success to all your wishes, except for the de- 
struction of us Saxons, and believe me always very 
cordially yours, jANE W. Carlyle." 

The calamity to which Carlyle alludes in the next 
letter was among the heaviest of my life. My 
young wife and Thomas Davis, the friend I loved 
best on the earth, died within a week : — 

" Chelsea, Ocf. 25, 1845. 

" My dear Sir, — Will you accept of this book 
[' Past and Present '] from me, which probably you 
have already examined, but may put now on your 
shelves as a symbol of regards that will not be un- 
welcome to you ? 

" For a good while past, especially in late weeks, 
during a rustication in Scotland, I have read punctu- 
ally your own part, or what I understand to be such, 
of the Nation newspaper, and always with a real 
sympathy and assent. There reign in that depart- 
ment a manfulness, veracity, good sense and dignity, 
which are worthy of all approbation. Of the much 
elsewhere that remains extraneous to me, and even 
afflictious to me, I will here say nothing. When 
one reflects how, in the history of this world, the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. ii 

noblest human efforts have had to take the most 
confused embodiments, and tend to a beneficent 
eternal goal by courses ;l/iej/ were much mistaken 
in — why should we not be patient even with Repeal ? 
You I will, with little qualification, bid persevere 
and prosper, and wish all Ireland would listen to 
you more and more. The thing you intrinsically 
mean is what all good Irishmen and all good men 
must mean ; let zV come quickly, and continue for 
ever. Your coadjutors also shall persevere, under 
such conditions as they can, and grow clearer and 
clearer according to their faithfulness in these. 

" My wife, while I was absent, received a little 
book from you with much thankfulness, and answered 
with light words, she says, in profound ignorance of 
the great affliction just then lying heavy on you, 
which had made such a tone very inappropriate. 
Forgiveness for this — you may believe always that 
there is a true sympathy with you here, a hearty 
goodwill for you here. 

"When you come to London again, fail not to 
let us see you. If I ever visit Ireland, yours is a 
house I will seek out. With many wishes and 
regards yours very sincerely, 

" T. CARLYLE." 



Though Carlyle wrote his letters spontaneously — 
I have seen hundreds of them without a correction 
or erasure — he was as painstaking with his proofs 
as Burke or Macaulay. The next letter was sug- 



12 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

gested by a desire for accuracy in the topography of 
Cromwell's Irish campaign : — 

" Chelsea, /«??. 19, 1846. 
" I am about to do what to another kind of man 
than you I should myself regard as a very strange 
thing. I am sending you the ' Curse of Cromwell ' 
to get it improved for me ! The case is, I am very 
busy preparing a second edition of that book ; and 
am anxious, this being the last time that I mean 
to touch it, to avoid as many errors as may be 
avoidable. In the Irish part of the business I could 
not, after considerable search and endeavour, pro- 
cure any tolerable Irish atlas ; and in spelling out 
the dreadful old newspaper letters from that scene, 
which are nearly indecipherable sometimes, I felt 
now and then my footing by no means secure. 
Other errors there may be which an intelligent, 
punctual man, acquainted with the localities, might 
put me on the way of rectifying; but those of the 
names of places and such like he would himself 
rectify. For geographical corrections I see nothing 
that I can do so wise as depend upon you and your 
help. . . . Excuse all this. I would like much to 
talk weeks with you on these subjects ; for it seems 
to me, as I have said already, Ireland, which means 
many millions of my own brethren, has again a 
blessed chance in having made a man like you speak 
for her, and also (excuse the sincerity of the word ) 
that your sermon to her is by no means yet accord- 
ing to the real gospel in that matter." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 13 

This service having been duly performed, was 
graciously acknowledged : — 

'■'March 12, 1846. 

" I have received the annotated sheets this day, 
and am abundantly sensible of the trouble you 
have taken, in reference especially to such a matter, 
which many good feelings in you, in the twilight 
we yet look at it under, call upon you to hate and 
not to love ! In spite of all obstructions, my fixed 
hope is that just men, Irish and English, will yet 
see it as God the Maker saw it, which I think will 
really be a point gained for all of us, on both sides 
of the water. It is not every day that the Supreme 
Powers send any missionary, clad in light or clad 
in lightning, into a country to act and speak a 
True Thing there ; and the sooner all of us get to 
understand, to the bottom, what it was that he 
acted and spoke, it will most infallibly be the better 
every way. Nations and men that cannot under- 
stand Heaven's message, because (which very often 
happens) it is not agreeable to them — alas ! the 
sum of all national and human sins lies there, and 
our frightful doom is ' to follow the message of 
the otJier place then.' I believe you to be a good 
man and one of the chosen of Ireland, or I would 
not write these things to you. Certainly if 3^ou 
could abolish the scene of Portnadown Bridge and 
other such out of my mind, you would do me a 
real kindness; and indeed it is mostly gone, or 
altogether gone, out of the memory of England, 
fierce as it once stood there ; but out of the 



14 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

memory of Ireland it ought never to go. Oh, no, 
not till Ireland be very much other than it yet is. 
And a just and faithful son of Ireland has some- 
thing quite other to do with it than tell his country- 
men to forget it. You by much meditating might 
understand what it was that Cromwell (a man also 
lifted far away above all ' rubbish ' in his time) did 
mean, and the eternal Heaven along with him, in 
Ireland. If you cannot, there is no other Irishman 
yet born, I suppose, that can ; and we shall have 
to wait for him perhaps with terrible penalties for 
his not being here. 

" Some friendly critic upbraids me, on one of 
these sheets, that I do not admit the Irish to be 
a nation. Really and truly that is the fact. I 
cannot find that the Irish were in 1641, are now, 
or until they conquer all the English, ever again 
can be a * nation,' anything but an integral con- 
stituent part of a nation — any more than the Scotch 
Highlands can, than the parish of Kensington can. 
Alas ! the laws of Nature in regard to such matters 
(what used to be called God's laws) are very 
different indeed from those written down in books 
of sentiment, as many a poor Polander and the 
like finds to his cost. Nay, do not stamp this note 
under your feet, or at least pick it up again and 
read my thanks, my real regard for you, and best 
wishes in all things. 

"The printer, I believe, has most of the 'Irish 
Campaign' in type, but I will profit carefully by 
your corrections still." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 15 

With the topographical corrections I sent him 
some notes on the character of Owen Roe O'Neill, 
the general on whom the Irish relied at that era, 
but who died (by poison, his partisans believed) 
before Cromwell landed in Ireland. 



His First Visit to Ireland. 

Carlyle had long desired to visit Ireland, and in 
the summer of 1846 promised that he would soon 
carry out this design. Here is his letter : — 

" Chelsea, /z^/)/ 22, 1846. 

" I am just about escaping out of London, for a 
little movement and for summer air, of which I have 
rather need at present for more reasons than one. 
To-morrow afternoon I expect to be in Lancashire 
with some friends, where my wife now is ; the sea 
breezes and the instantaneous total change of scene 
will be good so far as they go. My next goal, for 
another rest of longer or shorter continuance, must 
be my native place, Dumfriesshire, on the other side 
of the Solway Frith, where I must aim to be about 
the first week in August. 

"One of my intermediate projects was a short 
flight over to Ireland, upon which I wish to consult 
you at present. A swift steamer, I know, takes 
one over any evening (or, I believe, morning) with 
the mail-bags : there is Dublin to be looked at for 
a day or two, there is * Conciliation Hall ' to be seen, 
once ; then yo2i are to be seen and talked with, 



i6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

oftener than once if you like ; many other things no 
doubt ; but this is nearly all of definite that rises on 
me at present, and this, if other things go right, will 
abundantly suffice. In Dublin and all places I get 
nothing but pain out of noise and display, and insist, 
even at the expense of some breaches of politeness, 
on remaining altogether private — strictly incognito 
— if there is any need of putting an ' in ' to it, which 
sometimes (for poor mortals are very prurient, and 
run after Pickwicks and all manner of rubbish) I 
have found there was. From Dublin I could get 
along, by such route as seemed pleasantest, to 
Belfast, and then on the proper day a steamer puts 
me down at Annan, on the Scotch Border, my old 
school-place, within six miles of the smoke of my 
mother's cottage ; very well known to me, all dead 
and a few living things, when once I am at Annan. 

" This is the extent of my project, which may or 
may not become an action, though I do hope and 
wish in the affirmative at present. What part of it 
chiefly depends on you is, to say whether or not 
you are in Dublin, how a sight of Conciliation Hall 
(I want nothing more but a sight with somebody to 
give me the names) in full work is to be obtained ; 
and what else, if anything, you could recommend 
to the notice of a very obtuse and lonesome stranger 
taking a two days' glimpse of such a place. Do 
this for me, if you please, so soon as you find an 
hour of leisure ; my address is * Mrs. Paulet's, Sea- 
forth House, Liverpool,' whither also, if you could 
make your people send the Nation till new notice. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 17 

it would save a little time and trouble to certain 
parties. But that latter point is, of course, not 
important. 

"Mr. O'Connell, I am not much concerned to 
find, is somewhat palpably deserting ' Repeal,' and 
getting into a ^'r/z^r relation, I suppose, towards the 
earnest men of Ireland who do mean what they talk. 
I cannot say any man's word that I hear from your 
side of the water gives me anything like an unmixed 
satisfaction, except for most part your own : there 
is a candid clear manfulness, simplicity, and truth 
in the things you write for your people (at least I 
impute them to you) which seems to me the grain 
of blessed unnoticed wheat among those whirlwinds 
of noisy chaff, which afQict me as they pass on 
their way to Chaos, their fated inevitable way ; but 
the wheat, I say to myself, will grow. So be it. 
Expecting a word from you soon. — Yours always 
truly, T. Carlyle." 

I welcomed the project cordially, and received 
further details when he had already set out on his 
summer excursion. 

"Seaforth House, Liverpool, 
Aii£: 6, 1846. 
" Your hospitable and most friendly message found 
me here the day after my arrival. Travelling suits 
me very ill, only the fruit of travelling is of some 
worth to me. Heaven, I think, among other things, 
will be a place where one has leave to sit still. 

"The Belfast steamer, it turned out on inquir}^, 

B 



i8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

sailed only once a fortnight ; the first day too early 
for my limits, the second too late. Belfast therefore 
was out. There remained then Dublin, and perhaps 
a run to Drogheda, and back again to Liverpool; 
which did for some days seem possible ; but new 
perversities arose from another side, unforeseen or 
but half foreseen ; and on the whole I have to decide 
that Ireland for the present is impossible ; that I 
must embark for my mother's this night. To- 
morrow morning my address, if I prosper, will be 
' Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.,' to which place, if you 
can again trouble your clerk to direct my copy 
of the Nation, or failing that, to return to his old 
Chelsea address, it will be a kind of saving of 
trouble. I by no means give up my notion yet of 
seeing you and a glimpse of Ireland before return- 
ing home, but I must attack it now on the other 
side, and after a variety of Scotch movements, which 
are still much in the vague for me. My wife stays 
here for a few days longer with some relations in 
the neighbourhood, and after that, I hope, will join 
me in Scotland ; but her health at this moment is 
far from good, and her movements are and must be 
a little uncertain. She still remembers you with true 
interest, and is far enough from standing between 
me and Ireland : she rather urges me thither, did 
not laziness and destiny withstand. This with many 
real regards and regrets, and with real hopes too, 
is all I can say of my Irish travels at present. You 
shall certainly hear of me again before I return. 
" For the present (though this was not one of 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 19 

my motives) it has struck me you might be as well 
not to have me or any stranger near you ! A 
crisis, and, as I augur, perhaps a truly blessed one, 
is even now going on in your affairs. For the first 
time I read a Conciliation Hall debate last week; 
the veracity and manfulness, the intelligence and 
dignity seemed to me to be all on one side, and 
the transaction, though beneficent, was to me a 
really tragic character. But the divorce of earnest 
valour from blustering and incoherent nonsense is 
a thing that did behove to come. May a blessing 
follow it ! Much may follow. — Yours always, 

"T. CARLYLE." 



In the autumn he wrote from Scotsbrig, where he 
was on a visit to his mother, that his arrangements 
were nearly completed, and again, a little later, to 
announce the day of his arrival in Ireland. 

"Scotsbrig, ^z/^Zifj-/ 29, 1846. 
" I am still here, lounging about, with occasional 
excursions, in a very idle manner, for some weeks 
past ; one of the saddest, most mournfully interest- 
ing scenes for me in all this world. The moors are 
still silent, green, and sunny, and the great blue 
vault is still a kind of temple for one there ; almost 
the only kind of temple one can try to worship in 
in these days. Otherwise, the country is greatly in 
a state of degravement, the harvest, with its black 
potato-fields, no great things, and all roads and 
lanes overrun with drunken ?iavvies ; for our great 



20 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Caledonian Railway passes in this direction, two 
railways, and all the world here, as elsewhere, 
calculates on getting to Heaven by steam ! I have 
not in my travels seen anything uglier than that 
disorganic mass of labourers, sunk threefold deeper 
in brutality by the threefold wages they are getting. 
The Yorkshire and Lancashire men, I hear, are 
reckoned the worst, and, not without glad surprise, 
I find that the Irish are the best in point of be- 
haviour. The postmaster tells me several of the 
poor Irish do regularly apply to him for money 
drafts, and send their earnings home. The English, 
who eat ' twice ' as much beef, consume the residue 
in whisky, and do not trouble the postmaster. If 
there were any legislator in this country, he would 
swiftly and somewhat sternly, I think, interfere in 
the matter : a poor self-cancelling * National Palaver ' 
cannot interfere. ' Parliament in College Green ! ' 
O Heaven, you ought daily to thank Heaven that 
that is for ever an impossibility for you ! I would 
like also to show Exeter Hall and the Anti-Slavery 
Convention a glimpse of these free and independent 
navvies on the evening of monthly pay-day, and 
for a fortnight after. But enough of them and their 
affairs. 

" I am now looking homewards ; but have not yet 
by any means given up my purpose to have a glance 
at Ireland first. On the contrary, I am now busy 
making out an eligible route. One or two on closer 
investigation have been renounced ; my view at 
present is towards Ayrshire, towards some of the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 21 

Western Scotch ports. Glasgow, at any rate, will 
not fail to offer a steamer, but I do not, except on 
necessity, care to see Glasgow at present. One 
way or other, I think it likely I may be in Ireland, 
on some point or other, in a week hence. You 
shall hear from me again, with more minute speci- 
fications, in not many days. 

" If Dundrum be, as I fancy, a clean sea-village, 
it might be possible to procure, what I find for most 
part very unattainable away from home, a lodging 
with a qinef bedroom, in which the wretched traveller 
might hope for natural sleep. All else is indifferent 
but that ; and that, too, has generally to make itself 
indifferent. But if such were the case, I might very 
pleasantly stay two or three days beside you, and 
bathe in the Irish Sea, before I went farther. In 
any case I mean to see you there, to have a con- 
siderable colloquy with you, if I can. My next 
address will be Dumfries (Mrs. Aitken, Assembly 
Street), but after Wednesday I shall not be sure of 
getting it at once. Pray let the Nation henceforth 
be sent to Chelsea as heretofore, where my wife 
will now in two days be. I wish I were there 
myself, and my travels well over. — Yours ever 
truly, T. Carlyle." 

" Dumfries, Sept. 2, 1846. 

" On Friday, the day after to-morrow, I propose 

to set out for Ayr; and ten miles beyond that, at 

Ardrossan, expect to find a steamer which will land 

me at Belfast early next morning, some time between 



22 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

4 and 6 A.M. of Saturday. I hope to see Belfast, 
and get very swiftly out of the smoke of it again. 
So far is clear prediction, if the Fates will; after 
that I am somewhat in the vague; but do con- 
fidently expect to find some coach that will carry 
me to Drogheda that same day, and calculate ac- 
cordingly on passing the Saturday night at Drog- 
heda, sleeping or not as the Destinies appoint. 
From Drogheda to you, by aid of railways, &c., 
I think there cannot be above two hours : some 
time on Sunday, at some place or other, I flatter 
myself, we shall have met. My ulterior movements 
shall remain undecided till I have rested for a day. 

" Drogheda, as Cromwell's city, and twice besieged 
in that war, is a place I could look at for some 
hours with proper interest, especially if I had an 
intelligent monitor to tell me what to look at, but 
that I fear is far too great a luxury to hope for ; I 
must try to do the best I can without that. In any 
case, I will call at the Post Office, and if a letter 
from you lie there waiting me with any indication 
as to Drogheda, and more especially as to yourself, 
and how I can best see you, it is like to be very 
welcome indeed. No more in such a hurry as this." 

Dundrum was not, as Carlyle supposed, a water- 
ing-place on the coast, but a village on a slope of 
the Dublin mountains, where I was then spending 
the summer. It contented him, however, and he 
met there, among other notabilities, most of the 
writers and orators on whom their contemporaries 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 23 

bestowed the sobriquet of Young Ireland. He 
was evidently pleased with some of them, and he 
won their respect and sympathy in no limited 
measure. We brought him to Conciliation Hall, 
where he saw O'Connell, and to as many of the 
lions of Dublin as it was possible to interest him 
in, and after a brief visit he sailed away to England, 
leaving many enthusiastic friends behind. The 
relation of these young Irishmen to Carlyle was 
somewhat different from the relation existing between 
him and thoughtful young Englishmen. He did not 
teach them to think as /le thought, but he confirmed 
their determination to think for themselves. As 
they were not idlers or fops, but serious students, 
they welcomed his dictum that work done was the 
best evidence of life and manhood, and that any 
toleration of shams or false pretences was fatal 
to self-respect. I can confidently affirm that his 
writings were often a cordial to their hearts in 
doubt and difficulty, and that their lives were more 
sincere, simple, and steadfast because they knew 
him. 

W. E. FORSTER. 

The year after his visit the famine which sprang 
from the potato blight of 1846 was raging in Ireland. 
He sent me the report of a young Quaker intrusted 
with the distribution of a relief fund contributed 
chiefly by the Society of Friends. It exhibited such 
practical sense and generous sympathy that I read 
it with much interest, little foreseeing that the 
young man would, in a few years, become a stern 



24 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ruler of the country to which he was a benevolent 
visitor. 

"Chelsea, March i, 1847. 

" Dear Duffy, — Here is a paper which has 
come to me to-day from the writer of it, a very 
worthy acquaintance of mine, which as a small 
memorial of me for the moment, a small drop of oil 
on huge waters of bitterness and tumult, I send 
you to read. Forster is a young wealthy manu- 
facturer, who migrated some years ago from 
Devonshire or Cornwall to Yorkshire for taking 
up that trade, and was recommended to me by 
John Sterling; I have ever since liked him very 
well. A Quaker, or rather the son of a Quaker, 
for he himself has little to do with what is obsolete, 
a most cheery, frank-hearted, courageous, clear- 
sighted young fellow : — the Quakers, some months 
ago, made a special subscription for Ireland, and 
decided, like prudent people, on seeing with their 
own eyes their money laid out. Forster's father 
and self were of the deputation for that end, or, for 
aught I know, were the sole deputation ; and this is 
the report they have given in. Read it, I say, and 
enjoy five minutes of a Sabbath-feeling — not too 
frequent with any of us in these times. 

*' It is long since I heard anything direct from 
you ; nay, in the Nation itself I now find but little 
of you ; only here and there, in some genial, honest, 
patient human word (as in the paper on Emigration 
last week) do I trace your hand, and with all my 
heart wish it speed. The aspect of Ireland is beyond 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 25 

words at present. The most thoughtless here is 
struck into momentary silence in looking at it; the 
wisest among us cannot guess what the end of 
these things is to be. For it is not Ireland alone ; 
starving Ireland will become starving Scotland and 
starving England in a little while ; if this despicable 
root will but continue dead, we may at last all say 
that we have changed our sordid chronic pestilential 
atrophy into a swift fierce crisis of death or the be- 
ginning of cure ; and all * revolutions ' are but small 
to this — if the potato will but stay away ! 

"Your Irish governing class are now actually 
brought to the Bar; arraigned before Heaven and 
Earth of /wwgoverning this Ireland, and no Lord John 
Russell, or * Irish Party ' in Palace Yard, and no man 
or combination of men can save them from their sen- 
tence, to govern it better, or to disappear and die. 
The sins of the fathers fall heavy on the children, 
if after ten generations — surely, I think, of all the 
trades in the world that of Irish landlord at this 
moment is the frightfullest. The Skibbereen peasant 
dies at once in a few days; but his landlord will 
have to perish by inches, through long years of 
disquieting tumult, dark violence, and infatuation 
under yet undeveloped forms ; and him, if God take 
not pity on him, nobody else will pity ! Either 
this, it seems to me, is inevitable for the Irish 
landlord, or else a degree of manfulness and gene- 
rous wisdom, such as one hardly dares to hope 
from him — from him or from those about him. It 
is realty a tremendous epoch we have come to, if 



26 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the potato will not return ! And then, as I said, 
our Scotch landlords, and then also our EngHsh, 
come in their turn to the Bar — not much less 
guilty, if much more fortunate — and they now will 
have a ravelled account to settle ! But England 
and they are fortunate in this, that we have already 
another aristocracy (that of wealth, nay, in some 
measure that of wisdom, piety, courage) — an aristo- 
cracy not at all of the * chimerical ' or ' do nothing ' 
sort, though not yet recognised in the Heralds' books, 
or elsewhere well ; but an aristocracy which does 
actually guide and govern the people, to such ex- 
tent at least as that they do not by wholesale die 
of hunger. That you in Ireland, except in some 
fractions of Ulster, altogether want this, and have 
nothing but landlords, seems to me the fearful 
peculiarity of Ireland. To relieve Ireland from this; 
to at least render Ireland habitable for capitalists, 
if not for heroes; to invite capital, and industrial 
governors and guidance (from Lancashire, from 
Scotland, from the moon, and from the Ring of 
Saturn), what other salvation can one see for 
Ireland ? The end and aim of all true patriotism is 
surely thitherward at present ! Alas ! you must 
tell Mitchel that I read with ever greater pain those 
wild articles of his, which, so much do I love in 
them otherwise, often make me very sad. Daniel 
O'Connell, poor old man, now nearly do7ie with his 
noisy unveracities, has played a sad part in this 
earth! All Ireland cries out, 'You have saved us.' 
But the fact is very far otherwise. Good Heavens ! 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 27 

when I think what pestilent distraction, leading 
direct to revolt and grape-shot, and yet unsounded 
depths of misery he has cast into all young heroic 
hearts of Ireland, I could wish the man never had 
been born ! Mitchel may depend on it, it is not 
repeal from England, but repeal /ro7/i the Devil, 
that will save Ireland. England, too, I can very 
honestly tell him, is heartily desirous of 'Repeal,' - 
would welcome repeal with both hands if England 
did not see that repeal had been forbidden by the 
laws of Nature, and could in the least believe in 
repeal ! Ireland, I think, cannot lift anchor and 
sail away with itself. We are married to Ireland 
by the ground-plan of this world — a thick-skinned 
labouring man to a drunken ill-tongued wife, and 
dreadful family quarrels have ensued ! Mitchel I 
reckon to be a noble, chivalrous fellow, full of talent 
and manful temper of every kind. In fact, I love 
him very much, and must infinitely regret to see the 
like of him enveloped in such poor delusions, parti- 
sanships, and narrow violences, very unworthy of 
him. * Young Ireland,* furthermore, ought to under- 
stand that it is to them that the sense and veracity 
of England looks mainly for help in a better admini- 
stering of Ireland ; to them (and not to the O'Connell 
party, who are well seen for what they are), to them, 
in spite of all their violence, for it is believed that 
there are among them true men. This I can testify- 
as a fact on rather good evidence. Adieu, dear Duffy ; 
I meant but a word, and here is an essay ! — Ever 
yours, T. Carlyle. 



28 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" The Chapmans were to send you a book they 
had been reprinting of mine. I suppose it arrived 
safe. Read the Tablet of yesterday, and forgive 
the editor for some nonsense that now and then 
falls from him ; this is sense. These poor priests in 
Cloyne : weeks ago, when I read the report of their 
meeting, I said to myself, ' Thank God for it. This 
is the first rational utterance of the human voice I 
have yet heard in that wide howl of misery and 
folly which makes the heart sick ! ' May all the 
priests in Ireland with one accord do the like, and 
all true Irishmen join with them. Adieu." 

A little later he sent felicitations on an event of 
high personal importance to me. 

"Chelsea, March 15, 1847. 
" Dear Duffy, — I am delighted to hear of your 
good fortune ! From a phrase in your former letter 
I had been anticipating something of this kind, 
which now it seems has happily arrived. I noticed 
the young beauty, among the others, that day in 
Bagot Street; but had I then known what was 
coming I should have taken a much closer survey. 
Pray give her my best regards ; my true wishes 
that this new union may be blessed to you both, 
that you may have many happy, and, what is much 
more, many brave and noble years together in this 
world. If it be the will of the Fates, I shall be right 
glad to make farther acquaintance with this lady, 
perhaps under better auspices, some time by-and-by. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 29 

The site of your new house (for we went by so 
many routes to Dundrum) is not at present very 
clear to me ; may I know it better one day, and see 
with satisfaction what a temple of the Muses and 
stronghold of the heroisms and veracities you have 
made of it, even in these dark times ! A man in all 
' times ' makes his own world : this in the darkest 
condition of the elements is a gospel that should 
never forsake us. 

" I am very idle here at present ; but surely, if I 
live, shall not always be 'idle.' The world, mainly 
a wretched world of imposture from zenith to nadir, 
seems as if threatening to fall rapidly to pieces in 
huge ruin about one's ears; it seems as if in this 
loss of the poor Irish potato the last beggarly film 
that hid the abyss from us were snatched away, and 
now its black throat lay yawning, visible even to 
fools ! How to demean oneself in these new circum- 
stances is rather a question. We shall see Bocca 
stretta occhi sciolti. 

" I will say no more about ' Repeal ' at present. 
The ' Coxcombs in London ' are a dreadful sorrow 
to us all, and every honest soul of us is straining 
as he can to get rid of them in some good way — to 
change them and their windy spouting establish- 
ment into some real council of Amphictyons. But 
we know also that already they are not ' the Govern- 
ment,' except in name merely ; that already the real 
Government, and even the Acts of Parliament, for 
every locality, rest truly with those that have power 
in that locality — in Ireland with the Irish aristocracy. 



30 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

for example ; the more is your woe ! Do you think 
^/lej/ are precious to any good man here ? Adieu. 

" T. CARLYLE." 



His Second Visit to Ireland. 

Three years later, Carlyle paid a second visit to 
Ireland. To make the conditions and circumstances 
of this new journey intelligible, some brief ex- 
planation may be convenient. In the interval the 
political and personal fortunes of his Irish friends 
had undergone a tragical reverse. The generous 
young men who surrounded him in 1846 were for 
the most part State prisoners or political refugees 
in 1849. A famine, which had twice decimated 
the agricultural population in a country which pro- 
duced a superabundance of food for all its people, 
drove men to abandon further reliance on peti- 
tions and remonstrances to a deaf oracle. The Euro- 
pean revolutions of 1848 indicated another possible 
remedy for intolerable wrongs, and in the mid- 
summer of that year a national insurrection was 
attempted. In the forlorn and dispirited condition 
of the people it failed utterly, and the men respon- 
sible for the attempt, some of the very men, indeed, 
who had welcomed Carlyle to Ireland three years 
earlier, were convicted of high treason or treason 
felony, and were transported beyond the seas. 

For my part, I had been four times arraigned 

for the same offence as my friends, but it proved 

. impossible to obtain a verdict. The curious story 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 31 

of my escape has been already told in detail.^ It 
may be stated in a sentence. Lord Clarendon, 
then Lord Lieutenant, honoured me with his special 
enmity, and to procure a sure and speedy verdict 
against me, so overstrained the criminal law that, 
by the skill of my eminent counsel, the instrument 
was shattered in his hands. After ten months' 
close imprisonment, during which the steam was 
three times kindled in the frigate designed to 
carry me into penal exile, and had to be three 
times extinguished amid public laughter, which 
seriously discomposed official and judicial persons, 
I was admitted to bail, to come up if required for 
another trial at the next Commission, 

During my imprisonment, Carlyle wrote to me 
with affectionate sympathy. He was far from 
approving of an Irish revolution, or believing one 
possible ; but it may be assumed that he was of 
opinion I had not done anything in furtherance of 
that object unworthy of a man of honour. 

"Chelsea, October 21, 1848. 
"Dear Duffy,— It was not till last night that 
I could discover for myself any distinct plan of 
attempting to convey a word of sympathy to you, 
in this the time of your distress ; and I know not 
still for certain whether the small enterprise can 
take effect. If this bit of paper do reach you within 
your strait walls, let it be an assurance that you are 

^ "Four Years of Irish History." By Sir C. Gavan Duffy. 
London ; Cassell & Co. 



32 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Still dear to me ; that in this sad crisis which has 
now arrived, we here at Chelsea do not find new 
cause for blame superadded to the old, but new 
cause for pity and respect, and loving candour, and 
for hope still, in spite of all ! The one blame I 
ever had to lay upon you, as you well know, was 
that, like a young heroic all-trusting Irish soul, you 
had believed in the prophesying of a plausible son 
of lies preaching deliverance to your poor country ; 
and believing, had, as you were bound in that case, 
proceeded to put the same in practice, cost what it 
might cost to you. 

" Even in this wild course, often enough denounced 
by me, I have to give you this testimony, that your 
conduct was never other than noble ; that whoever 
might show himself savage, narrow-minded, hateful 
in his hatred, C. G. Duffy always was humane and 
dignified and manful ; nay, often enough, in the midst 
of those mad tumults, I had to recognise a voice of 
clear modest wisdom and courageous veracity, ad- 
monishing ' Repealers ' that their true enemy was not 
England after all, that repeal from England, except ac- 
companied by repeal from the Devil, would and could 
do nothing for them ; and this most welcome true voice, 
almost the only such I could hear in Ireland, was the 
same C. G, Duffy's. Courage, my friend ; all is not 
yet lost ! A tragic destiny has severed you from 
that one source of mischief in your life. Let this, 
though at such a hideous cost to you, be welcome, 
as instruction dear-bought but indispensable ! By 
Heaven's blessing, this is no finis in your course, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 

but the Jinis only of a huge mistake, and the 
beginning of a much nobler course, delivered from 
that. I mean what I say. The soul of a man can 
by no agency, of men or of devils, be lost and 
ruined, but by his own only ; in all scenes and 
situations this is true, and if you are the true man 
I take you to be, you will find it so yet. Courage, 
I say ; courage, patience, and for a time pious 
silence ! If it please God, there is yet a day given 
us ; ' all days have not set ; ' no, only some of them. 
" Dear Duffy, I know not whether you can send 
me any word of remembrance from the place where 
you are, but rather understand that you cannot, nor 
is it material, for I can supply the word. But if 
now, or henceforth at any time while I live, I could 
be of any honest service to you, by my resources 
or connections here or otherwise, surely it would 
be very welcome news to me. Farewell for the 
present. My wife joins in affectionate salutation to 
you. That autumn evening on the pier at Kings- 
town, with your kind figure, and Mitchel's in the 
crowd, yes, it will be memorable to me while I 
continue in this world. Adieu. — Yours ever truly, 

"T. Carlyle." 

After my release from prison, I spent a few 
weeks in London, and saw much of Carlyle, Mrs. 
Carlyle, and their closest friends. I do not think 
his second visit to Ireland was projected at that 
time, but shortly after my return home he mooted it 
in a letter. 

C 



34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" Chelsea, 29^"/^ Maj 1849. 
" Dear Duffy, — There has risen a speculation 
in me, which is getting rather lively in these weeks, 

^\ of coming over to have a deliberate walk in Ireland, 
and to look at the strange doings of the Powers 
there with my own eyes for a little. The hot 
season here — of baked pavements, burning skies, 
and mad artificialities growing ever madder, till 
in August they collapse by sheer exhaustion — is 
always frightful to me ; and during this season, 
from various causes, is likely to be frightfuller than 
common : add to which, that I have fewer real 
fetters binding me here than usual — nothing express 
at all but an edition of 'Cromwell,' which the 
printers, especially after two weeks hence, may 
manage for themselves ; in short, all taken together, 
I incline much to decide that I ought to give myself 
the sight of one other country summer somewhere 
on this green earth, and that Ireland, on several 
accounts, has strong claims of preference on me. I 
do not expect much pleasure there, or properly any 
' pleasure.' Alas ! a Book is sticking in my heart, 
which cannot get itself written at all ; and till that 
be written there is no hope of peace or benefit for 
me anywhere. Neither do I expect to learn much 
out of Ireland. Ireland is, this long while past, 
pretty satisfactorily intelligible to me — no pheno- 

' menon that comes across from it requiring much 
explanation ; but it seems worth while to /00k a 
little at the unutterable Oirtiiis Gulf of British, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 35 

and indeed of European, things, which has visibly 
broken forth there : in that respect, if not in 
another, Ireland seems to me the notablest of all 
spots in the world at present. * There is your 
problem — -yours, too, my friend.' I will say to my- 
self, * Then, see what you will make of that ! ' In 
short, why shouldn't I go and look at Ireland, and 
be my own {Eternity s) Commissioner there ? Wm. 
Edward Forster, the young Quaker whom you have 
seen, offers to attend me for at least two weeks, 
from the middle of June onwards; and, in truth, 
day after day the project is assuming a more 
practical form. Probably something really may 
come of it. 

" My preparations hitherto do not amount to 
much ; yet I am doing, under obstructions, what I 
can. Yesterday, not till after much groping, I did 
at last get a tolerable map of Ireland (the Railway 
Commissioners', in six big pieces). I have examined 
or re-examined various books ; but, unfortunately, 
find hardly one in the hundred worth examining. 
Sir James Ware's book (by Harris) is the one good 
book I have yet seen. Flaherty says * Camden 
saw England with both eyes, Scotland with only 
one, and Ireland ccbcus, with none ' — nevertheless, 
Camden is yet by far my best guide in historical 
topography; indeed he, the very Apollo of topo- 
graphers, has rendered all others vile to me, un- 
endurable on any ground that he has touched. I 
have also read the life of St. Patrick — Jocelyn's 
absurd legend; the dreary commentaries of poor 



36 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Bollandists ; and St. Patrick's own Confessio (which 
I beheve to be genuinely his, though unfortunately 
it is typical, not biographical) ; and one of the few 
places where I yet clearly aim to be is on the top 
of Croagh Patrick, to wish I could gather all the 
serpents, devils, and inalefici thither again, and 
rolling them up into one big mass, fling the whole 
safely into Clew Bay again ! St. Patrick's Purgatory 
too (but the real one, — in Lough Erne, I think) ; the 
Hill of Tarah likewise, — and if I could find that 
Castle of Darwasth (or Ardnochar and Horseleap, 
in W. Meath county), where the native carpenter, 
when Hugh de Lacy was showing him the mode 
of chipping and adzing, suddenly took his axe and 
brained De Lacy — I should esteem it worth while. 
The famishing Unions ^ I of course want especially 
to see ; this of itself, I suppose, will take me into 
the * Picturesque ' department, which, on its own 
strength, I must not profess to regard much. What 
remarkable ine7t have you in Ireland ? There is a 
very wide question. But, in fact, I am still, as you 
perceive, in a dim inquiring condition as to this 
tour, and solicit help fi^om any likely quarter. 
Aubrey de Vere has undertaken to put down on 
paper his notions of a set of Irish notabiles and 
notabilia for me : one of the purposes of this letter 
was partly to try whether you perhaps would not 
contribute a little in the same way, or in any other 
way. Write me a word as soon as you have 
leisure on this and on other things. 

^ The Poor Law Unions, where the famine was most aggravated. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 37 

" [John] Forster was greatly pleased with you 
both, and perhaps there may be an abatement of 
nonsense in one small province of things by reason 
of that visit. What you are deciding on for your 
own future course will be very interesting to me, 
so soon as it has got the length of being talked 
about. We send many kind regards to Mrs. Duffy, 
last seen as a Naiad, then vanishing in the dust of 
the Strand — Eheu ! In Bagot Street there is a 
beautiful sister, whom I remember well, and always 
wish to be remembered b}^^ No more ; paper and 
time are done. — Yours ever truly, 

" T. Carlyle." 

A second letter on the same subject refers to my 
conditional promise to accompany him on his excur- 
sion, the condition being that I was not in prison 
at the time fixed for the journey, for my bail termi- 
nated on the 1 2th of July, little more than a month 
from the date of his letter. 

" Chelsea, /2^;z^ 8, 1849. 
" Dear Duffy, — Many thanks for your comfort- 
able, kind, and instructive letter. I like well to 
fancy you fishing in the clear waters about Bray, 
in the still valley of the Dargle, in this weather, and 
do imagine that whatever else you may catch, there 
is a real chance of your achieving, in such scenes 

^ Mrs. Callan, a woman of remarkable gifts and accomplish- 
ments, to whom Carlyle, as will be seen, sent friendly messages 
for more than forty years. 



38 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and employments, some addition of health and com- 
posure both to body and mind. Fear nothing for 
the ' I2th of July;' there is, I suppose, not the 
slightest purpose on the part of the official persons 
to try that operation again; they know too well 
that if they did, they have not the least chance 
to succeed. If it pleases Heaven, you shall have 
passed victoriously through that most dangerous 
experiment — dangerous not from Monahan^ alone, 
or even chiefly, as I read it, and a new and clearer 
course will henceforth open for you, not to terminate 
without results that all wise men will rejoice at. 
You have an Ireland ready to be taught by you, 
readier by you just now than by any other man ; 
and God knows it needs teaching in all provinces 
of its affairs, in regard to all matters human and 
divine ! Consider yourself as a brand snatched 
from the burning, a providential man, saved by the 
beneficent gods for doing a inaiis work yet, in this 
noisy, bewildered, quack-ridden and devil-ridden 
world ; and let it, this thought, in your modest in- 
genuous heart, rather give you fear and pious anxiety 
than exultation or rash self-confidence — as I know 
it will. 

" Certainly I mean to avail myself of your guid- 
ance, of your proffered company, if it will at all 
suit ; and we will take ' the three weeks ' in what- 
ever quarter your resources can best profit the 
common enterprise. Meanwhile, as to time — though 
I feel that there ought now to be no delay on my 
^ The Irish Attorney-General. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 39 

part (for, in fact, I must soon go to Ireland or else- 
whither), there has yet been no day fixed, and my 
speculations and inquiries, which still continue, yield 
me scattered points of interest all over Ireland ; but 
except the 'famine districts,' which one must see, 
but would not quite hasten to see, there is no point 
I am decisively attracted to beyond all others ; so 
that the voyage hitherto is still zVz nitbibus as to all 
its details. As to the day of its commencement, 
which is the first indispensable detail, A. de Vere 
advises that I should wait a little till the cholera 
abate in those sad regions. I myself think of 
coming by steam from London at once, speculate 
on starting second Thursday hence, sometimes (in 
sanguine moments) even first Thursday ! To- 
morrow I am to consult with Twistleton (an ex- 
cellent man, who loves Ireland, whom you would 
have loved had you known him) ; to-day I go for 
the Penny Cyclopcsdia affairs you spoke of, I read 
Fraser too, with the map ; and much else. I must 
see Glendalough, Ferns, Enniscorthy, Doneraile 
(Mouser's House there) ; in fact, I am getting fondest 
of Wexford, I find. Write to me what yoicr times 
are, so far as they are fixed. — Yours ever truly, 

''T. CARLYLE." 



But to get a philosopher afloat on seas which he 
had not explored was no ordinary enterprise, and 
it needed several additional despatches before he 
set sail. 



40 THOMAS CARLYLE, 

" Chelsea, /zme i6, 1849. 

" Ever since Sunday last I have had a despicable 
snivelling cold hanging about me; fruit of these 
grim north winds, which we enjoy here in the grey 
condition with almost no sun. Add to this a most 
wearisome miniature painter, who (with almost no 
effect) has cut out the flower of every morning for 
me; and has not yet ended, though he is now 
reduced to after-dinner hours — and, in fact, may 
end when he like, for he will never manage his 
affair, I perceive. 

" So that I have been obliged to give up Thursday 
Jirst, but do now definitely say TJnirsday come 
a week. Barring accidents, I mean to sail on that 
day (10 A.M.) in the steamer for Dublin from this 
port ; when the steamer will arrive, you can perhaps 
tell me, for I do not yet learn here, having hitherto 
been no farther eastward than the office in the 
Regent's Circus in prosecution of my inquiry. 
Expect me then, however, if accidents befall not, 
and if with utmost industry I do not fail to get 
these innumerable ragtaggeries settled or suppressed 
in time for that morning ; * Thursday come a week,' 
which I think is the twenty-eighth of the month, 
is announced as my day of sailing. Mrs. Carlyle 
purposes, in a day or two after, to set out for 
Scotland and some secluded visiting among friends. 
Forster may now, for what I know, appear in 
Dublin about the same time ; his perennial cheerful- 
ness, intelligent, hearty, and active habits would 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 41 

render him a very useful element in such an expedi- 
tion, I believe. But at any rate, I am delighted that 
you go with me, and I really anticipate a little good 
from the business for myself and for all of us. 

" Twistleton, whom I see again to-morrow, will 
furnish the introductions you suggest. If the agent 
of any EngHsh estate, or indeed, I suppose, of any 
chief Irish one, could prove serviceable, most pro- 
bably some of my friends here could procure it for 
me; but that, at any rate, can be managed from 
Ireland quite as well. Of Irish aristocrats I re- 
member only Stafford O'Brien, Lord Bessborough, 
Castlereagh, &c., none of whom, by the aspect of 
him, had much promise for me. I suppose the 
Imperial Hotel is as good as any ? Please say, 
and consider of tours and of methods, &c., for 
two persons, and for third Kildare, Maynooth, &c., 
and then southward along the coast. Three days 
in Dublin, or even two. — Yours ever truly, 

" T. Carlyle." 

" Chelsea, ///?2^ 24, 1849. 
" Dear Duffy, — Your Dublin agent for ships is 
right, and I am wrong : for Dublin the days of 
sailing are Wednesday and Saturday (if one looks 
narrowly, with spectacles, into the corners of the 
thing) ; and what is more, their hour of sailing 
seems to be variable, sometimes so early in the 
morning as would not suit me at all ! Add to which, 
I am sunk over head and ears in a new avalanche 
of Cromwell rubbish all this day (the last, I do 



42 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

hope, of that particular species of employment !), 
and I have barely time to save the post, and send 
you a word postponing- the exact decision. On the 
whole, Holyhead and the railway still survive. My 
attraction for the other route was partly that I might 
see once the southern shores of England ; also that 
I might be left entirely alone, which, for two days 
in a returning Dublin steamer, I calculated might 
well be my lot. Alone, and very miserable, it will 
beseem me to be, a good deal in this the most 
original of my ' tours.' Brief, on Monday I will try 
to settle it, and then tell you. 

" Forster does not come with me ; will join me 
when I like after, &c., &c. I mean that yon shall 
initiate me into the methods of Irish travel, and keep 
me company so far as our routes, once fixed upon, 
will go together. Your friendly cheerfulness, your 
knowledge of Ireland, all your goodness to me, I 
must make available. Define to 3^ourself what it is 
you specially aim towards in travelling, that I may 
see how far without straining I can draw upon you. 

" People are giving me letters, &c. Aubrey de 
Vere has undertaken for * six good Irish landlords,' 
vehemently protesting that ' six ' (suggested by me) 
is not the maximum number. He wishes to send 
me across direct to Kilkee (Clare County), where 
his friends now are. A day or two of peace at some 
nice bathing-place, to swim about, and then sit silent 
looking out on the divine salt flood, is very inviting 
to my fancy; but Kilkee all at once will not be the 
place, I find. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 

"Twistleton brought his successor Power down 
with him last night. I hoped Power might have been 
an Irishman ; but I do not think he is. Twistleton 
is decidedly a loss to Ireland, I reckon, as matters 
now stand ; a man of much loyalty, pious affection, 
stout intelligence, and manful capability every way. 

" I have read a good many of your friend 
Ferguson's ' Irish Counties,' which is slow work, if 
one hold fast by the map ; but is very instructive. 
I wish these articles existed as a separate book.^ 
I would take them with me as the best vade mecum 
on such a journey. Have you got the book * Facts 
from Gweedore ' ? I never could see it yet, but 
consider it well worth seeing. Irish songs you 
also remember. 

" A Mr. Miley, a Catholic priest of your city, was 
to have come to me one day ; but I think the unfor- 
tunate painter must have deterred Lucas and him ; 
at all events, they did not appear. 

" Enough for this day ; on Monday a more definite 
prophecy, as to time at least. — Yours ever truly, 

"T. Carlyle." 

" Chelsea, /z^;/d? 26, 1849. 
" Dear Duffy, — On Wednesday, by theAthlone, 
or by something else better if I fail in the A tlilone 
(of which you shall have notice) ; expect me, there- 
fore, not later than that day ; and so let one point, 
the preliminary of all, be fixed at last. 

^ Probably Sir Samuel Ferguson's topographical papers in the 
Dublin University Magazine, 



44 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" A stock of letters, to be used or not, for Dublin 
and other places, especially for the ruined West, is 
accumulating on me ; in Dublin I have a Dr. Stokes, 
Dr. Kennedy, Chambers Walker, and various mili- 
tary and official people ; certainly longer than ' two 
days' will be needed in Dublin if I am to get much 
good, of these people ; but I will make what despatch 
proves possible. 

" You have your ' routes ' in a state of readiness 
that we may be able at once to get to business. At 
present, Maynooth, Kildare town, and then some 
march across to Glendalough, or through Wicklow, 
is jfiguring in my imagination ; after which, Wexford, 
Ross, Waterford, &c. But in my present state of 
insight all hangs in the clouds. I wish only I were 
fairly among the hills and green places, with the 
summer breeze blowing round me, and a friendly 
soul to guide and cheer me in my pilgrimage. 
Kildare, I repeat, for St. Bridget's sake — Bridekirk 
(her kirk, I suppose), was almost the place of my 
birth ; and Bridget herself, under the oaks 1400 
years ago, is for her own sake beautiful to me. 
One Fitzgerald, a Suffolk Irish friend of long stand- 
ing, offers me introduction to some specifically Irish 
family of his kindred in that region — on the Curragh 
itself, if I remember. We shall see. 

"All kinds of business yet remain for me, and 
not a minute to spare. People say the Queen is 
coming to look at Ireland, fooHsh creature ! — Yours 
ever truly, T. CARLYLE." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 45 

Carlyle reached Dublin on 3rd of July, and spent 
a week in accepting hospitalities from a few of his 
original friends of 1846 who remained, and from 
various official personages, to whom he brought in- 
troductions from London. He left behind some hasty 
notes of his Irish journey, which have unhappily 
been published since his death. He gave them to 
his amanuensis soon after they were written ; they 
passed through several hands, and finally reached 
a firm of publishers, who printed them, and sent 
proofs to certain of Carlyle's friends for considera- 
tion. I recommended that the proposed volume 
should be suppressed, out of respect for his memory ; 
but Mr. Froude, who could speak with more authority 
in the premises, was of opinion that the publishers 
were free to do what they pleased with what had 
become their property, and he saw no objection to 
their giving it to the world. Carlyle describes him- 
self as setting out from Scotland "in sad health 
and sad humour," and this temporary gloom dis- 
colours the book. Though he is universally cour- 
teous in his references to the friends to whom I 
presented him in Dublin and during the subse- 
quent journey, some of them country gentlemen, 
barristers, and doctors, who a few months before 
had been political prisoners, or inscribed in the 
Castle list of suspects, he writes of notable persons 
of both sexes in Dublin who received him with 
lavish hospitality with a license of language which 
I am persuaded he himself would neither have 
justified nor sanctioned had he lived to see it in 



46 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

print.^ There is nothing which a man might not 
have written to his wife or friend without offence, 
but there is much quite unfit to be launched into 

jDubHcity. 

Carlyle was at this time past fifty years of age, 
had a strong, well-knit frame, a dark, ruddy com- 

" plexion, piercing blue eyes, close-drawn lips, and 
an air of silent composure and authority. He was 
commonly dressed in a dark suit, a black stock, a 
deep folding linen collar, and a wide-brimmed hat, 
sometimes changed for one of soft felt. A close 
observer would have recognised him as a Scotchman, 
ari^probably concluded that he was a Scotchman 
who had filled some important employment. There 

^ This is the book known as " Reminiscences of my Irish Journey 
in 1849." By Thomas Carlyle. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 
& Co. 1882. 

A'curious pedigree of Irish discontent might be extracted from 
Carlyle's experience on this journey. lie was the guest in Dublin, 
Kilkenny, Cork, Galway, and other towns, of men who were em- 
bodiments of a passion which had quite recently exploded in an un- 
successful insurrection. The introductions he brought from London 
were sometimes to men who were sons of noted rebels of a previous 
generation, who had conspired with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and 
Wolfe Tone for separation from England. Dr. Stokes, President 
of the College of Physicians, and a Professor in the University, he 
notes as " son of an United Irishman." Sir Alexander MacDonnell, 
Chief Commissioner of Education, as^ "son of an United Irishman, 
too ; " and in a young Fellow of the University he recognises the 
Laureate of '98. He even encountered the Irish discontent, which 
was ripening for an eruption twenty years later, in the person of 
Isaac Butt, not yet an avowed Nationalist. " I saw, among others, 
Councillor Butt, brought up to me by Duffy : a terribly black, burly 
son of earth ; talent visible in him, but still more animalism ; big 
bison-head, black, not ^ziife unbrutal : glad when he went off ' to 
the Galway Circuit ' or whithersoever." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 47 

was not a shade of discontent or impatience dis- 
cernible- in his countenance ; if these feehngs arose, 
they were kept in check by a disciphned will. It 
must be remembered that by this time his life had 
grown tranquil ; he had outlived his early struggles 
to obtain a footing in life and a hearing from the 
world; he had written the "French Revolution"^' 
and " Cromwell," and his place in literature was no 
longer in doubt, A number of young Englishmen, 
beginning to distinguish themselves as writers or 
in public life, recognised him as master, and one of 
the show-places which distinguished foreigners were 
sure to visit in London was the narrow house in a 
dingy little street off the Thames, where the Philo- 
sopher of Chelsea resided. , 

This is the aspect he presented among men to 
whom he was for the most part new. But I musty 
speak of his relation to his fellow-traveller. If you 
want to know a man, says the proverb, make a 
solitary journey with him. We travelled for six 
weeks on a stretch, nearly always tete-a-tete. If I 
be a man who has entitled himself to be believed, 
I ask those who have come to regard Carlyle as 
exacting and domineering among associates, to accept 
as the simple truth my testimony that during those 
weeks of close and constant intercourse, there was 
not one word or act of his to the young man who 
was his travelling companion unworthy of an indul- 
gent father. Of arrogance or impatience not a shade. 
In debating the arrangements of the journey, and 
all the questions in which fellow-travellers have a 



^^ 



4S THOMAS CARLYLE. 

joint interest, instead of exercising the authority to 
which his age and character entitled him, he gave 
and took with complaisance and good-fellowship. 

I do not desire the reader to infer that the stories 
of a contrary character are absolutely unfounded ; 
but they have been exaggerated out of reasonable 
relation to fact, and have caused him to be grievously 
misunderstood. He was a man of genuine good 
nature, with deep sympathy and tenderness for 
human suffering, and of manly patience under 
troubles. In all the serious cares of life, the repeated 
disappointment of reasonable hopes, in privation 
bordering on penury, and in long-delayed recogni- 
tion by the world, he bore himself with constant 
courage and forbearance. He was easily disturbed, 
indeed, by petty troubles, when they interfered with 
his life's work, never otherwise. Silence is the 
necessary condition of serious thought, and he was 
impatient of any disturbance which interrupted it. 
Unexpected intrusion breaks the thread of reflection, 
often past repair, and he was naturally averse to 
such intrusion. He had sacrificed what is called 
success in life in order to be free to think in solitude 
and silence ; and this precious peace, the atmosphere 
in which his work prospered, he guarded rigorously. 
At times he suffered from dyspepsia, and critics are 
sometimes disposed to forget that dyspepsia is as 
much a malady, and as little a moral blemish, as 
toothache or gout, and the sufferer a victim rather 
than an offender. I shall perhaps return to 'this 
subject, and I am content to say here that I have 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 49 

often seen a " brisk little somebody critic and 
whipper-snapper in a rage to set things right " 
show more temper in an hour than this maligned 
man in an exhausting journe}'' of weeks. 

We travelled slowly during a great part of July 
and August, through Leinster, Munster, and Con- 
naught, in journeys of many hours at a time, made 
in the carriages of our friends, in railway trains, 
stage coaches, or Irish cars. There were oppor- 
tunities for continued talk, which I turned to account 
in a manner which Carlyle describes in his " Irish 
Reminiscences." Two or three extracts will suffi- 
ciently indicate how the daily tete-a-tete was em- 
ployed. 

" Waterford car at last, in the hot afternoon we 
rattled forth into the dust. . . . Scrubby ill-cultivated 
country. Duffy talking much, that is — making me 
talk. Kilmacthomas, clean, white village, hanging 
on the steep decliningly. Duffy discovered ; en- 
thusiasm of all for him, even the policeman. Driver 
privately whispered me he would like to give a cheer. 
' Don't, it would do him no good.' . . . Jerpoint 
Abbey, huge distressing mass of ruins, huts leaning 
on the back of it — to me nothing worth at all, or 
less than nothing if dilettantism must join with it. 
Rest of the road singularly forgotten; Duffy keep- 
ing me so busy at talk, I suppose. ' Carrickshock ' 
farm on the west, where ' 18 police,' seizing for 
tithes, were set upon and all killed some eighteen or 
more years ago. And next ? Vacancy, not even 

D 



50 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

our talk remembered in the least — probably of ques- 
tions which I had to answer. Duffy, &c." 

Sometimes we seem to have got on danger- 
ously explosive topics. "This afternoon was it 
I argued with Duffy about Smith O'Brien ; I in- 
finitely vilipending, he hotly eulogising the said 
Smith," or "Sadly weary; Duffy reads Irish ballads 
to me, unmusical enough," where his temporary 
mood probably influences his judgment. But the 
talk was chiefly of eminent men whom he had 
known. When I named a man in whom I was 
interested, he spoke of him forthwith. When I 
named another he took up the second, and so 
throughout the day. I knew that one of his most 
notable gifts was the power of making by a few 
touches a likeness of a man's moral or physical 
aspect, not easily forgotten. His portraits were 
not always free from a strain of exaggeration, but 
they were never malicious, never intentionally cari- 
pcatured ; they represented his actual estimate of 
' the person in question. It has been said of him 
that he had a habit which seemed instinctive of 
looking down upon his contemporaries, but it must 
not be forgotten that it was from a real, not an 
imaginary eminence. He insisted on a high and 
perhaps impossible standard of duty in the men 
whom he discussed ; but it was a standard he lived 
up to himself, and it only became chimerical when 
it was applied indiscriminately to all who were 
visible above the crowd. His own life was habi- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 51 

tually spent in work, and belonged to a moral world 
almost as far apart from the world in which 
the daily business of life is transacted as the 
phantom land of the " Pilgrim's Progress." It is 
sometimes forgotten how completely posterity has 
pardoned in Carlyle's peers characteristics which 
are treated as unpardonable crimes in him. His 
sense of personal superiority was not so constant 
or so vigilant as Wordsworth's, though the poet 
was perhaps more cautious in the exhibition of it ; 
Burke was far more liable to explosions of passion, 
and Johnson harsher and more peremptory every 
day of his life, than Carlyle at rare intervals in 
some fit of dyspepsia. 

Of his manner, I ought, perhaps, to say a word. 
In a tete-d-tete he did not declaim but conversed. 
His talk was a clear rippling stream that flowed 
on without interruption, except when he acted the 
scene he was describing, or mimicked the person 
he was citing. With the play of hands and head 
he was not a bad mimic, but his countenance and 
voice, which expressed wrath or authority with 
singular power, were clumsy instruments for badin- 
age. His attempts, however, were more enjoyable 
than skilful acting; he entered so frankly into the 
farce himself, laughing cordially, and manifestly 
not unmindful of the contrast his levity presented 
to his habitual mood. Though he commonly spoke 
the ordinary tongue of educated Englishmen, if 
he was moved, especially if he was moved by 
indignation or contempt, he was apt to fall into 



52 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

v/hat Mrs. Carlyle calls "very decided Annan- 
dale." 

I made notes of his talk daily, and finally offered 
them to him to read. He playfully excused himself, 
but tacitly sanctioned the practice, which I con- 
tinued down to his death. It is more than forty 
years since the earliest notes were written. I have 
omitted many which time has rendered obsolete, 
but otherwise they remain as they were set down 
on the day of the conversation. I more than once 
meditated destroying them as they had answered 
their original purpose, which was simply my per- 
sonal instruction ; but when I considered what would 
be the worth of Bacon or Burke's impression of his 
most notable contemporaries, I shrank from destroy- 
ing Carlyle' s judgments on men, concerning many 
of whom the world maintains a permanent interest. 
What most of us enjoy with the keenest relish in 
the memoirs and correspondence of men of letters 
is their judgment of each other. We can rarely 
accept it without reserve, but what Montaigne 
thought of Rabelais, what Ben Jonson thought of 
Shakespeare, Rousseau's private opinion of Voltaire, 
Samuel Johnson's estimate of Fielding and Richard- 
son will always be memorable. Even Byron's rash 
judgment on Wordsworth and Keats, Southey's 
contempt for Shelley, or, to come lower down, 
Brougham''s estimate of Macaulay, or Macaulay's 
estimate of Brougham are only obiter dicta in 
criticism, but are tit-bits in literary gossip. We 
do not regard Fielding as a blockhead and a barren 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 53 

rascal because Johnson pronounced him to be so, or 
Wordsworth as a poetical charlatan and a political 
parasite on the authority of Byron ; and when 
Brougham declares that Macaulay could not reason, 
and had no conception of what an argument was, 
or when Macaulay affirms that Carlyle might as 
well take at once to Irving's unknown tongue as 
write such an essay as "Characteristics," there is 
no harm done except to the critic himself; but we 
would not willingly lose even the splenetic judg- 
ments of men of genius, much less judgments which 
are often profoundly wise and always substantially 
fair like those iittered by Carlyle. 

Wordsworth. 

On our first day's journey, the casual mention of 
Edmund Burke induced me to ask Carlyle who was 
the best talker he had met among notable people in 
London. 

He said that when he met Wordsworth first he 
had been assured that he talked better than any 
man in England. It was his habit to speak what- 
ever was in his mind at the time, with total indiffer- 
ence to the impression it produced on his hearers ; 
on that occasion he kept discoursing on how far you 
could get carried out of London on this side and on 
that for sixpence. One was disappointed, perhaps ; 
but, after all, this was the only healthy way of 
talking, to say what is actually in your mind, and 
let sane creatures who listen make what they can of 



54 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

it. Whether they understood or not, Wordsworth 
maintained a stern composure, and went his way, 
content that the world should go quite another 
road. When he knew him better, he found that 
no man gave you so faithful and vivid a picture of 
any person or thing which he had seen with his 
own eyes. 

I inquired if I might assume that Wordsworth 
came up to this description of him as the best talker 
in England. 

Well, he replied, it was true you would get more 
meaning out of what Wordsworth had to say to you 
than from anybody else. Leigh Hunt would emit 
more pretty, pleasant, ingenious flashes in an hour 
than Wordsworth in a day. But in the end you 
would find, if well considered, that you had been 
drinking perfumed water in one case, and in the 
other you got the sense of a deep, earnest man, who 
had thought silently and painfully on many things. 
There was one exception to your satisfaction with 
the man. When he spoke of poetry he harangued 
about metres, cadences, rhythms and so forth, and 
one could not be at the pains of listening to him. 
But on all other subjects he had more sense in him 
of a sound and instructive sort than any other 
literary man in England. 

I suggested that Wordsworth might naturally like 
to speak of the instrumental part of his art, and 
, consider what he had to say very instructive, as by 
modifying the instrument, he had wrought a revolu- 
tion in English poetry. He taught it to speak in 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 55 

unsophisticated language and of the humbler and 
more familiar interests of life. 

Carlyle said, No, not so ; all he had got to say in 
that way was like a few driblets from the great 
ocean of German speculation on kindred subjects by 
Goethe and others. Coleridge, who had been in 
Germany, brought it over with him, and they tran- 
slated Teutonic thought into a poor, disjointed, 
whitey-brown sort of English, and that was nearly 
all. But though Wordsworth was the man of most 
practical mind of any of the persons connected with 
literature whom he had encountered, his pastoral 
pipings were far from being of the importance his 
admirers imagined. He was essentially a cold, 
hard, silent, practical man, who, if he had not fallen 
into poetry, would have done effectual work of some 
sort in the world. This was the impression one 
got of him as he looked out of his stern blue eyes, 
superior to men and circumstances. 

I said I had expected to hear of a man of softer 
mood, more sympathetic and less taciturn. 

Carlyle said, No, not at all ; he was a man quite 
other than that; a man of an immense head and 
great jaws like a crocodile's, cast in a mould designed 
for prodigious work. 

Francis Jeffrey. 

After a pause he resumed. As far as talk might 
be regarded as simply a recreation, not an inquiry 
after truth and sense, Jeffrey said more brilliant 



56 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and interesting things than any man he had met in 
the world. He was a bright-eyed, Hvely, ingenuous 
little fellow, with something fascinating and radiant 
in him when he got into his drawing-room tribune. 
He was not a great teacher, far enough from that, 
nor a man of solid sense like Wordsworth, but his 
talk was lively and graphic, though, when one came 
to consider it, it was not in any remarkable degree 
instructive or profitable. It was pleasant and titil- 
lating, at any rate, like the odorous perfume of a 
pastille m^x milles jleurs. 

I remarked that, having started in life with the 
traditional estimate of Jeffrey as the king of critics 
and so forth, I found his articles in the Edinburgh 
Review, when I hunted them out with infinite pains, 
thin and disappointing. 

Yes, Carlyle replied, his speculations and cogita- 
tions in literature were meagre enough. His critical 
faculty was small, and he had no true insight into 
the nature of things ; but the Edinburgh Review 
had been of use in its time, too; when a truth 
found it hard to get a hearing elsewhere, it was 
often heard there. At present the great Review 
was considerably eclipsed, and the influence with 
which it started into life was quite gone. 

Browning and Coleridge. 

I begged him to tell me something of the author 
of a serial I had come across lately, called " Bells 
and Pomegranates," printed in painfully small type, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. $7 

on inferior paper, but in which I took great delight. 
There were ballads to make the heart beat fast, and 
one little tragedy, "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 
which, though not over disposed to what he called 
sentimentality, I could not read without tears. The 
heroine's excuse for the sin which left a blot in a 
'scutcheon stainless for a thousand years, was, in 
the circumstances of the case, as touching a line as 
I could recall in English poetry : — 

" I had no mother, and we were so young." 

He said Robert Browning had a powerful intel- 
lect, and among the men engaged in literature in 
England just now was one of the few from whom it 
was possible to expect something. He was some- 
what uncertain about his career, and he himself 
(Carlyle) had perhaps contributed to the trouble 
by assuring him that poetry was no longer a field 
where any true or worthy success could be won or 
deserved. If a man had anything to say entitled to 
the attention of rational creatures, all mortals would 
come to recognise after a little that there was a 
more effectual way of saying it than in metrical 
numbers. Poetry used to be regarded as the 
natural, and even the essential, language of feel- 
ing, but it was not at all so ; there was not a 
sentiment in the gamut of human passion which 
could not be adequately expressed in prose. 
Browning's earliest works had been loudly ap- 
plauded by undiscerning people, but he was now 
heartily ashamed of them, and hoped in the end to 



58 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

do something altogether different from " Sordello " 
and " Paracelsus." He had strong ambition and 
great confidence in himself, and was considering his 
future course just now. When he first met young 
Browning, he was a youth living with his parents, 
people of respectable position among the Dissenters, 
but not wealthy neither, and the little room in 
which he kept his books was in that sort of trim 
that showed he was the very apple of their eyes. 
He was about six and thirty at present, and a little 
time before had married Miss Barrett, the writer of 
various poems. She had long been confined to a 
sofa by spinal disease, and seemed destined to end 
there very speedily, but the ending was to be quite 
otherwise, as it proved. Browning made his way 
to her in a strange manner, and they fell mutually 
in love. She rose up from her sick bed with re- 
covered strength and agility, and was now, it was 
understood, tolerably well. They married and were 
living together in Italy, like the hero and heroine of 
a mediaeval romance. 

I asked him did he remember a little poem of 
Coleridge's called, " The Suicide's Argument ; " it 
had the most astonishing resemblance to one of 
Browning's various styles, and in a smaller man 
would suggest palpable imitation. 

This was the poem : — 

"THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT. 

Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, 
No question was asked me — it could not be so ! 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 59 

If the life was the question, a thing sent to try, 
And to live on be Yes ; what can No be ? to die. 

Nature's Answer. 

Is't returned, as 'twere sent ? Is't no worse for the wear ? 

Think, first, what you are ! Call to mind what you were ! 

I gave you innocence, I gave you hope. 

Gave health and genius, and an ample scope. 

Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair ? 

Make out the invent'ry ; inspect, compare ! 

Then die — if die you dare ! " 

He replied that Browning was an original man, 
and by no means a person who would consciously 
imitate any one. There was nothing very admirable 
in the performance likely to tempt a man into imita- 
tion. It would be seen by-and-by that Browning 
was the stronger man of the two, and had no need 
to go marauding in that quarter. 

I said I thought the stronger man would find it 
hard to match " Christabel," or " The Ancient 
Mariner," or to influence men's lives as they had 
been influenced by "The Friend," or "The Lay 
Sermon " in their day. 

Not so, Carlyle said; whatever Coleridge had 
written was vague and purposeless, and, when one 
came to consider it, intrinsically cowardly, and for 
the most part was quite forgotten in these times. 
He had reconciled himself to believe in the Church 
of England long after it had become a dream to him. 
For his part he had gone to hear Coleridge when he 
first came to London with a certain sort of interest, 
and he talked an entire evening, or lectured, for it 



6o THOMAS CARLYLE. 

was not talk, on whatever came uppermost in his 
mind. There were a number of ingenious flashes 
and pleasant illustrations in his discourse, but it led 
nowhere, and was essentially barren. When all 
was said, Coleridge was a poor, greedy, sensual 
creature, who could not keep from his laudanum 
bottle though he knew it would destroy him. 

One of the products of his system, he added, after 
a pause, was Hartley Coleridge, whom he (Carlyle) 
had one day seen down in the country, and found 
the strangest ghost of a human creature, with eyes 
that gleamed like two rainbows over a ruined world. 
The poor fellow had fallen into worse habits than 
his father's, and was maintained by a few benevolent 
friends in a way that was altogether melancholy 
and humiliating. Some bookseller had got a book 
called " Biographia Borealis " out of him by locking 
him up, and only letting him out when his day's 
work was done. He died prematurely, as was to be 
expected of one who had forgotten his relation to 
everlasting laws, which cannot by any contrivance 
be ignored without worse befalling. His brother, 
he beheved, had long ceased to do anything for him. 
The brother was a Protestant priest; a smooth, 
sleek, sonorous fellow, who contrived to get on 
better in the world than his father or brother, for 
reasons which need not be inquired into. He had 
the management of some model High Church schools 
,at Chelsea, and quacked away there, pouring out 
huge floods of the sort of rhetoric that class of 
persons deal in, which he trie4 to persuade himself 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 6i 

he believed. These were about the entire outcome 
of the Coleridgian theory of human duties and 
responsibihties. 

I inquired if he had ever seen a sonnet by Cole- 
ridge not included in his poems, but published in 
"The Friend," entitled "The Good Great Man." 
In my judgment it might be confidently placed 
beside the best sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth ; 
if Robert Browning had written it of Thomas 
Carlyle, it would do honour to both. He had not 
read it, and I recited it from memory. 

" How seldom, Friend ! a good great man inherits 

Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains ! 
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 
If any man obtain that which he merits, 

Or any merit that which he obtains. 
For shame, dear Friend ! renounce this canting strain ; 
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ? 
Place — titles — salary — a gilded chain. 
Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain ? 
Greatness and goodness are not means but ends, 
Hath he not always treasures, always friends. 
The good great man ? Three treasures, love and light, 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath, 
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, 

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death." ^ 

Yes, he said there were bits of Coleridge fanciful 
and musical enough, but the theory and practice of 

^ Speaking of this little poem several years afterwards with 
Robert Browning, he pointed out a fact which had escaped me, 
that though in structure and character it is a sonnet, it might be 
technically denied that title, as it has a line more than the legitimate 
number. 



62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

his life as he lived it, and his doctrines as he 
practised them, was a result not pleasant to con- 
template. 

Reverting to Browning, I told him that I found 
it difficult to induce my friends to accept him at my 
estimate. One of them, to whom I lent " Sordello," 
sent it back with an inquiry, whether by any chance 
it might be the sacred book of the Irvingite Church, 
written in their unknown tongue. Or if it had a 
meaning, as I had assured him, was there any good 
reason why the problems of poetry should be made 
more obstruse and perplexing than the problems 
of mathematics ? 

At a later period (1854), speaking again of the 
Brownings, I asked him if he had read " Aurora 
Leigh." I found graphic character painting and 
charming bits of social philosophy in it, and a style 
as easy and flowing as the best talk of cultivated 
people. What it wanted, I thought, was what her 
husband was strongest in, dramatic power. The 
feeble old Puseyite and the peasant girl, the woman 
of fashion and the woman of genius, spoke the 
same epigrammatic or axiomatic language. If it 
were reduced to half the length, it would probably 
have twice the chance of living. 

Carlyle said he had read little bits of " Aurora 
Leigh," in reviews chiefly, and did not discern 
anything in it which suggested the probability of 
Its living beyond its little day. It furnished rather 
a beggarly account of this nineteenth century, with 
which one might guess future centuries would not 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 

concern themselves much. She went extensively 
into Fourierism and phalansteries, things likely to 
be altogether forgotten, and which would make 
the reading of the book a task as difficult to the 
next century as Spenser's historical allegories or 
Dryden's theological ones were just now. But she 
did not want a certain bright vivacity and kieen 
womanly eye for the strange things transacted in 
the theatre of the world neither. If her book was 
too big, that was not an uncommon fault of books 
just now. After a pause, he went on to say that 
he often reflected what an old Roman or a vigorous 
Norseman would make of modern sentimental poetry, 
or of such a windy phenomenon as Shelley or any 
of his imitators. 

Carleton. 

I recalled an incident at one of our recent break- 
fasts in Dublin, the by-play of which had escaped 
him. He was speaking of Shelley, and declared 
he was a poor shrieking creature who had said or 
sung nothing worth a serious man being at the 
trouble of remembering. D. F. MacCarthy, a young 
poet, who was an enthusiastic Shelleyite, was in 
great wrath, but controlled himself out of respect 
for the laws of hospitality.^ William Carleton,^ 
who was present, took up Carlyle's dictum, and 
declared that this was what he had long been 

^ D. F. MacCarthy, the translator of Calderon and author of 
" The Early Days of Shelley," &c. 
^ Author of " The Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." 



54 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

saying to these young men, but they would not 
hsten to him. MacCarthy, who had great humour 
and readiness, and who was persuaded that Carleton 
had never taken the trouble to read either Shelley 
or Carlyle, looked at him reproachfully a moment, 
and muttered, "Surely, Carleton, you would not 
disparage Shelley's masterpiece, 'Sartor Resartus'?" 
The ripple of laughter with which the company re- 
ceived this sally put Carleton on his guard ; he 
looked round the table, and with his keen natural 
wit, divined the state of the case, and escaped the 
ambuscade, " Ah, my young friend," he said, " it 
would be well for Shelley if he could write a book 
like * Sartor Resartus.' " 

Savage Landor. 

I spoke of Savage Landor. Landor, he said, was 
a man of real capacity for literary work of some 
sort, but he had fallen into an extravagant method 
of stating his opinions, which made any serious 
acceptance of them altogether impossible. If he 
encountered anywhere an honest man doing his 
duty with decent constancy, he straightway an- 
nounced that here was a phenomenal mortal, a new 
and authentic emanation of the Deity. This was a 
sort of talk to which silence was to be preferred. 
Landor had not come to discern the actual relation 
of things in the world ; very far from it. But there 
'was something honourable and elevated, too, in his 
view of the subject when one came to consider it. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 65 

He was sincere as well as ardent and impetuous, 
and he was altogether persuaded for the time that 
the wild fancies he paraded before the world were 
actual verities. But the personal impression he left 
on those who casually encountered him was that 
of a wild creature with fierce eyes and boisterous 
attitudes, uttering prodigious exaggerations on 
every topic that turned up, followed by a guffaw of 
laughter that was not exhilarating; rather other- 
wise, indeed. 

I said he dropped his paragons as abruptly as he 
took them up. The first edition of the " Imaginary 
Conversations " was dedicated to Bolivar and Sir 
Robert Wilson ; to Bolivar because he accomplished 
a more memorable work than any man had ever 
brought to a termination in this universe, and to 
Wilson for prodigious military achievements and 
heroic personal virtues. John Forster told me that 
Landor erased these dedications because he had 
altered his mind about both men, and regarded 
Bolivar, in particular, as an impostor, crowned with 
laurels for winning battles at which he was not 
even present. 

Yes, Carlyle replied, this was his method of 
procedure. He was not inflexible in his opinions, 
but he was inflexible in his determination to be 
right, which, when one came to consider it, was the 
more manful and honourable method. 

I suggested that it was a serious deduction from 
the " Imaginary Conversations " that they had the 
dramatic form without the dramatic spirit. He 

E 



66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

made Romans, Saxons, and Sandwich Islanders talk 
the same balanced periods, and approached the 
heart of a subject by the same slow Socratic 
method. And he sometimes destroyed the illusion 
of his work by putting sly sarcasms on Pitt or 
Byron, Napoleon or the Pope, into the mouths of 
Greeks and Romans, or of Englishmen of quite 
a different generation. 

Yes, he said, even in the windy rollicking Noctes 
of Blackwood you met human beings whose sayings 
belonged to the speaker, and were not to be con- 
founded one with another; but the "Conversations" 
were all more or less Landor. There were fine 
touches of character, it must be confessed, in 
his statesmen and poets which Wilson or Lock- 
hart could not match ; astonishing liveliness and 
vigour, too, and a far wider horizon of human 
interest. 

I inquired whether literature was not merely his 
pastime, taken up by fits and starts. 

He replied that Landor had been drawn into 
literature by ambition ; he found it did not altogether 
succeed with him ; his merits were far from being 
acknowledged by all mankind, which soured him in 
dealing with his fellow-creatures. 

After a pause he went on. Landor, when he was 
young, went to Italy, believing that England was 
too base a place for a man of honour to dwell in ; 
but he soon came to discover that Italy was intrin- 
sically a baser place. For the last ten years he 
lived near Bath, coming rarely to London, which he 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 

professed to hate and despise. He had left his wife 
in Italy, giving her all his income except a couple 
of hundred pounds to get him a daily beefsteak in 
England. She was not a wise or docile woman, 
and he could not live with her any longer. He 
was about to remove his children that they might 
be properly educated, a task for which he esteemed 
her in no way fit ; but the eldest son snatched up 
a gun, and declared that he had come to a time of 
life to form an opinion on this question, and by 
G — he would shoot any one who attempted to 
separate his mother and her children — so Landor 
had to leave them where they were. 

I inquired if his wife were the lanthe to whom 
so many of his poems were addressed. Carlyle said 
he thought not ; lanthe was probably a young girl 
at Bath, whom Landor counted the model of all 
perfection, and whom he got a good deal rallied 
about in London, other people forming quite a 
different estimate of her gifts. 



Odds and Ends. 

He fell into a pleasant gossip on trifling things, 
and suggested that "going the whole hog" was 
probably a phrase of Irish origin. Hog he found 
was a synonym in Ireland for a tenpenny piece 
when that coin was in common use in the country. 
It might be assumed, without much improbability, 
that an Irishman who began to give his friend a 



68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

treat in a frugal spirit gradually warmed to the 
business, and at length, in an explosion of hospitality, 
proclaimed his intention of magnanimously spend- 
ing the entire coin. In this sense, going the whole 
hog had a plain significance; but in the other it 
was hopeless nonsense. I told him that I thought 
I had recently chanced on the explanation of another 
perplexing phrase, Hamlet's test of his own sanity 
— that he knew a hawk from a handsaw. A 
plasterer who was working for me called to tlie 
boy in attendance to bring him his hawk, which it 
appears is the name of the sort of pallet on which 
a plasterer carries mortar. Knowing a hawk from 
a handsaw in this sense . was a natural enough 
test of intelligence, like knowing a hatchet from a 
crowbar. 

Was there any evidence, he inquired, that the 
word was in use in the reign of Elizabeth ? This 
was an indispensable basis for my hypothesis. 
The hawk and the heronshaw of falconry seemed 
a more natural comparison in the mouth of a 
young prince than one taken from the tools of an 
artisan. 

Speaking of the significant sayings of notable 
men, I happened to quote Lord Plunket's phrase, 
that to the unthinking history was only an old 
almanac. He said the phrase, if anybody cared to 
know, was not Lord Plunket's at all, but Jimmy 
Boswell's, who said to Johnsifon that somebody or 
other would reduce all history to the condition of 
an old almanac, a mere chronological series of 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 69 

events. I answered, laughing, that the currency 
of Jimmy Boswell's book in Ireland sixty years ago 
was an indispensable basis for any theory that 
called in question Plunket's originality. 

Speaking of the difficulties foreigners find in 
mastering colloquial English, he mentioned a blunder 
of Mazzini's, who called Scotch paupers "Scotch 
poors." I told him a kindred story which a friend 
of mine, who visited Dr. Dollinger, brought home 
with him. "There is a prodigious multitude of 
infidels in Germany, I fear," said my friend. "Yes," 
replied the professor, "infidels are numerous, but 
there are a good many ' fidels ' also." 

He had been smoking all day, and I suggested 
that one who suffered so much from sleeplessness 
and indigestion ought not to smoke, or at any rate 
to smoke so constantly. He replied that he pro- 
bably did himself some slight injury, but not much. 
He had given up smoking for an entire year at the 
instance of a doctor, who assured him at a period 
when he suffered much that his only ailment was 
too much tobacco. At the end of the year he was 
walking one evening in the country, so weak that 
he was hardly able to crawl from tree to tree, when 
he suddenly determined that whatever was amiss 
with him that fellow at least did not understand it, 
and he returned to tobacco, and smoked since with- 
out let or hindrance. In latter days he had got 
in London a bunch of Repeal pipes, as they were 
called, which were by far the best he had ever met 
with ; but he could not get a further supply in 



70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Dublin, though he had made careful inquiries. I 
laughingly assured him that these excellent Repeal 
pipes were strictly reserved for true believers in 
Irish Nationality, and promised him a supply if he 
qualified in the ordinary manner. 



part Secont), 

One of the objects of Carlyle's tour was to visit 
some of the distressed unions, and Kilkenny was 
the first we reached. The Board of Guardians, who 
had perhaps not carried out the policy of the Govern- 
ment with sufficient deference, was suspended, and 
a Vice-Guardian appointed in its place. We met 
this officer at the table of the Mayor, whose guests 
we were, and I abridge from the " Reminiscences " 
Carlyle's report of his experiences of various sorts 
in Kilkenny. An accident rendered him unfit for 
immediate work, but he was fortunate enough to 
get a long sleep, and speedily rallied to his task. 

" Kilkenny ; long feeble street of suburb ; sinks 
hollow near the Castle ; bridge and river there ; then 
rapidly up is inn. Car to Dr. Cane's O'Shaugnessy 
and the other two Poor-law Inspectors at dinner 
there ; still waiting (8l or 9 p.m.), Duffy, Cane, and 
Mrs. C. ; warm welcome : queer old house ; my 
foot a little sprained ; Dr. C. bandaged it. Talking 
difficult ; no good out of the O'Shaugnessys, no 
good out of anything till I got away to bed. {Next 
day.) O'Shaugnessy takes us out in Cane's carriage 
to look over his poor houses ; subsidiary poor-house 



72 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

(old brew-house, I think), workhouse being filled 
to bursting ; with some 8000 (?) paupers in all. 
Many women here ; carding cotton, knitting, spin- 
ning, &c., &c. place, and they, very clean ; — ' but 
one can,' bad enough ! In other Irish workhouses, 
saw the like ; but nowhere ever so well. Big 
Church or Cathedral, of blue stones, limestony in 
appearance, a-building near this spot. Buttermilk 
pails (in this subsidiary poor-house, as in all over 
Ireland) — tasted from one; not bad on hot day. 
Eheu ! — omitted other subsidiary poor-houses (I 
think) ; walked towards original workhouse with 
its 3000. Workhouse ' ordered as one could.' O'S. 
vproved to be the best of all the workers I saw in 
Ireland in this office ; but his establishment quite 
shocked me. Huge arrangements for baking, stacks 
of Indian meal stirabout ; lOOO or 2000 great hulks 
of men lying piled up within brick walls, in such a 
country, on such a day ! Did a greater violence to 
the law of nature ever before present itself to sight, 
if one had an eye to see it ? Schools, for girls, 
rather goodish ; for boys, clearly bad ; forward, 
impudent routine, scholar — one boy, with strong 
Irish physiognomy, getting bred to be an impudent 
superficial pretender. So ; or else sit altogether 
stagnant, and so far as you can, rot. Hospital : 
haggard ghastliness of some looks, — literally, their 
eyes grown 'colourless' (as Mahomet describes the 
horror of the Day of Judgment) ; 'take me home! ' 
one half-mad was urging ; a deaf man ; ghastly 
flattety^ us by another, {his were the eyes) : ah. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 73 

me ! Boys drilling, men still piled within their 
walls : no hope but of stirabout ; swine's meat, 
swine's destiny (I gradually saw) : right glad to get 
away. Cane himself, lately in prison for 'repale,' 
now free and Mayor again, is really a person of 
superior worth. Tall, straight, heavy man, with 
grey eyes and smallish globular black head ; deep 
bass voice, with which he speaks slowly, solemnly, 
as if he were preaching. Irish (moral) Grandison 
— touch of that in him ; sympathy with all that is 
good and manly however, and continual effort to- 
wards that. Likes me, is hospitably kind to me, 
and I am grateful to him. Upstairs about 8 o'clock 
(to smoke, I think), lie down on rough ottoman at 
bed's end, for 5 minutes — fall dead asleep, and Duffy 
wakes me at one o'clock ! We are to go to-morrow 
morning towards Waterford — I slept again, till 
towards six. {Next morning.) Off with Duffy, in 
Dr.'s chariot, to Railway Station about 10^ a.m." 

Our talk was at first of the scenes in the work- ' "-"^M^ 
house. The house was full of men fit for active 
industry, and women, many of whom were vigorous 
and healthy, squatting on the floor like negroes in 
a slave-ship. One Chamber of Horrors still re- 
mains in my memory : a narrow room where about 
thirty women sat round the walls, each carrying in 
her arms a pallid baby sickening in the poisoned 
air which they breathed over and over again. 
Carlyle was vehement in his indignation. He 
looked at many things in Ireland, he said, with 



/ 



74 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

silent pity, but tlie workhouse, where no one worked, 
was so unutterably despicable that he could not 
retain his composure. Consider the absurdity of 
shutting up thousands of forlorn creatures to be 
fed at the cost of beggars like themselves. Why 
not regiment these unfortunate wretches, put 
colonels and captains, sergeants and corporals, over 
them, and thrash them, if it proved needful, into 
habits of industry on some lands at home or in 
the colonies ? Try them for a couple of years, 
he would say, and if they could not feed and 
clothe themselves, they ought to be put out of the 
world. 

I suggested that he was indignant in the wrong 
quarter. These poor people did not object to 
work — would, I had no doubt, be rejoiced at the 
opportunity of working to escape from their pande- 
monium ; but the wisdom of the Empire assembled 
at Westminster decided that this being a work- 
house they must on no account be permitted to do 
a stroke of work. They were not sluggards at all, 
but the serfs of a Parliament which kept them swel- 
tering in compulsory indolence and apathy. 

After a time the talk returned to men of letters. 



Dickens and Thackeray. 

I asked him to tell me about Dickens, respecting 
whom I commonly found myself in a minority. 
His humour was irresistible, but was there a 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 75 

character in his books, except Mrs. Nickleby, whom 
one met in actual life ? I read Thackeray over 
and over again, but I had rarely been tempted to 
return to a book of Dickens. 

Dickens, he said, was a good little fellow, and \j 
one of the most cheery, innocent natures he had 
ever encountered. But he lived among a set of 
admirers who did him no good — Maclise the 
painter, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, and the 
like ; and he spent his entire income in their 
society. He was seldom seen in fashionable 
drawing-rooms, however, and maintained, one 
could see, something of his old reporter independ- 
ence. His theory of life was entirely wrong. He , 
thought men ought to be buttered up, and the 
world made soft and accommodating for them, and 
all sorts of fellows have turkey for their Christmas 
dinner. Commanding and controlling and punish- 
ing them he would give up without any misgiv- ^ 
ings in order to coax and soothe and delude them 
into doing right. But it was not in this manner 
the eternal laws operated, but quite otherwise. 
Dickens had not written anything which would be 
found of much use in solving the problems of life. 
But he was worth something ; he was worth a 
penny to read of an evening before going to bed, 
which was about what a read of him cost you. 
His last book went on as pleasantly as the rest, 
and he might produce innumerable such like books 
in time. 

I suggested that the difference between his men 



76 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and women and Thackeray's seemed to me like the 
difiference between Sinbad the Sailor and Robinson 
Crusoe. 

Yes, he said, Thackeray had more reality in him 
and would cut up into a dozen Dickenses. They 
were altogether different at bottom. Dickens was 
doing the best in him, and went on smiling in 
perennial good humour ; but Thackeray despised 
himself for his work, and on that account could 
not always do it even moderately well. He was 
essentially a man of grim, silent, stern nature, but 
lately he had circulated among fashionable people, 
dining out every day, and he covered this native 
disposition with a varnish of smooth, smiling com- 
placency, not at all pleasant to contemplate. The 
course he had got into since he had taken to 
cultivate dinner-eating in fashionable houses was 
not salutary discipline for work of any sort, one 
might surmise. 

I inquired if he saw much of Thackeray. No, 
he said, not latterly. Thackeray was much enraged 
with him because, after he made a book of travels 
for the P. & O. Company, who had invited him to 
go on a voyage to Africa in one of their steamers, 
he (Carlyle) had compared the transaction to the 
practice of a blind fiddler going to and fro on a 
penny ferry-boat in Scotland, and playing tunes to 
the passengers for halfpence. Charles Duller told 
Thackeray ; and when he complained, it was neces- 
sary to inform him frankly that it was undoubtedly 
his opinion that, out of respect for himself and his 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 77 

profession, a man like Thackeray ought not to have 
gone fiddling for halfpence or otherwise, in any 
steamboat under the sky. 

(Diary, 1880.) Speaking of both after they 
were dead, Carlyle said of Dickens that his chief j 
faculty was that of a comic actor. He would have 
made a successful one if he had taken to that sort 
of life. His public readings, which were a pitiful 
pursuit after all, were in fact acting, and very 
good acting too. He had a remarkable faculty for 
business ; he managed his periodical skilfully, and 
made good bargains with his booksellers. Set 
him to do any work, and if he undertook it, it was 
altogether certain that it would be done effectually, 
Thackeray had far more literary ability, but one "^ 
could not fail to perceive that he had no convic- / 
tions, after all, except that a man ought to be a 
gentleman, and ought not to be a snob. This 
was about the sum of the belief that was in him. 
The chief skill he possessed was making wonderful 
likenesses with pen and ink, struck off without 
premeditation, and which it was found he could 
not afterwards improve. Jane had some of these 
in letters from him, where the illustrations were 
produced, apparently as spontaneously as the 
letter. 

I said I was struck with a criticism which I 
heard Richard Doyle make on Thackeray, that he 
had a certain' contempt for even the best of his 
own creations, and looked down not only on 
Dobbin, but even on Colonel Newcome, He was 



78 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

a good-natured man, however. It was notable that 
he had written over and over again with enthu- 
siasm about Dickens, but I could not recall any 
reference to Thackeray in Dickens' writings during 
his lifetime, and only a lukewarm "In Memoriam" 
after his death. 

I asked him, was it as a practical joke, or to win 
a bet, that Thackeray named the heroine of " Pen- 
dennis " after a famous courtesan then in London? 
He said he did not know anything of this, but it 
could scarcely be an accident with a man about 
town like Thackeray. I told him of an incident 
which would have wounded Thackeray cruelly had 
he known it. He wrote a bantering note to an 
Edinburgh Reviewer — Macvey Napier, if I re- 
membered rightly, or perhaps Senior — furnishing a 
complete list of his works, asking a review in that 
periodical, and praying that his correspondent 
" might deal mercifully with his servant." He 
wanted a review to which he was eminently en- 
titled, and he was not ashamed to ask for it in a 
frank and direct manner ; but the letter was 
exhibited in a collection of autographs, in the 
waiting-room of Dr. Gully, the water doctor at 
Malvern, where blockheads would read it and 
misunderstand the entire transaction. 

Sir James Stephen. 

I had read Sir James Stephen's essays in the 
Edinburgh Review, and was much struck with 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 79 

some of them, especially the paper on Hildebrand, 
and I inquired about him. He said he was a man 
of good brains and excellent discipline, but of 
manner so strange that it was a long time, in fact 
several years, before he came to understand what 
sort of capacity the man had in him. He was 
constantly shaking and settling his head in a 
manner that was exceedingly foolish (mimicking), 
as if he was not satisfied with its position, and 
thought it might be arranged more conveniently. 
He was placed early in the Colonial Office, and 
had got trained in official life till he obtained a 
complete command of its formulas and agencies ; 
and it was found, whoever was Colonial Minister, 
Stephen was the real governor of the colonies. 
He bowed to every suggestion of the Minister, and 
was as smooth as silk, but somehow the thing he 
did not like was found never to be done at all. 
Charles Duller in his lively political youth named 
him Mr. Mothercountry — that is, the person who 
formulated the will of England for colonists, which 
was for the most part the will of James Stephen. 
His biographies of saints was a dilettante kind of 
task, which he took up on account of the quantity 
of eloquent writing that could be got out of it, not 
from any sympathetic or genuine love of the 
subject. He had no notion of living a life in 
any way resembling the lives of these men. He 
could talk about them, and inspect their doings 
with curious eyes, but doing like them was 
no part of his purpose ; quite otherwise, indeed. 



8o THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Stephen had recommended these subjects to him 
(Carlyle) before he took them up himself, but he 
could not discern a vestige of human interest in 
them. 

Latterly, Stephen retired from official life, and 
got knighted. He retired on account of the death 
of his son. The young fellow was travelling in 
Germany without understanding German at all, 
and he got so puzzled and irritated, that he fell 
sick at Dresden, and finally died. His father and 
mother had been terribly shattered by this un- 
expected catastrophe ; and so Stephen gave up the 
Colonial Office, and retired to his family to try to 
knit up silently the ravelled sleeve of life. He 
lived at Windsor, and seldom came to London now. 
Stephen was a clever man in his strange official 
way. He was one of the Clapham people ; and 
though he professed to apply their creed to human 
affairs generally, he had small belief in its potency 
by this time, one could see. 

Sir Henry Taylor. 

From Stephen the talk passed to Taylor. I 
spoke of " Philip van Arteyelde " as a striking 
picture of a popular leader, with weaknesses and 
shortcomings enough not to be idealised out of 
human sympathy, and expressed a desire to hear 
something of the author. Henry Taylor, he said, 
was an official under Stephen in the Colonial 
Office, but not at all a man of the same intellectual 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 8i 

girth and stature. But a notable person too — 
a sagacious, vigilant, exact sort of man. Philip 
van Artevelde was his idea of himself; but he 
was altogether a different person from that. He 
was cold and silent for the most part, and rather 
wearisome from the formal way he stated his 
opinions. He had been a sailor, and had he stuck 
by the ship he would have made a serviceable 
officer; for he had inflexible valour, and that 
silent persistency which was the main thing which 
made England what it was. He was engaged 
just now on a comedy — a decidedly hopeless 
project, the result of which would be consider- 
ably worse than nothing, for there was not the 
smallest particle of humour in the man. He 
might be said to be a steadfast student, though 
he read in all only half-a-dozen books ; but he 
read them a page a day. Bacon was one of 
them, and his great light on all subjects, specu- 
lative or practical. 

I said, if I might judge by my own feelings, 
Mr. Taylor was a living evidence that there was 
much to be said in poetry for which prose had 
no adequate substitute, or that, at any rate, there 
were men to whom poetry was a more natural 
vehicle of thought. I found his chief drama 
a constant enjoyment, but his prose, even on 
subjects which interested me considerably, had not 
the smallest attraction. There was ability and 
abundant experience in " The Statesman," for 
example, but I thought the style heavy, the ideal 

F 



82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of a Minister of State low, and the motif poor, 
and even immoral. 

Carlyle replied that charges of that kind had 
been made against the book, but unjustly, as 
he judged. Taylor expressed the highest ideal 
he had conceived of the thing he had been 
working among in the unprofitable racket of the 
Colonial Office. It was the result of his actual 
experience one might see — a plea for a juster 
allowance for the many impediments which had 
to be encountered in working public affairs. 
He had a great reverence for whatever was 
standing erect, and thought we were bound to 
accept it cheerfully because it was able to stand, 
overlooking the fact that there was a question 
behind all that — an altogether fundamental ques- 
tion — on which our reverence strictly depended. 
He had a high opinion of his own class, and a 
silent anger, one could perceive, at his (Carlyle's) 
unaccountable contempt for officialities. I would 
probably be interested to know that he had 
married a charming little countrywoman of mine, 
a daughter of Spring Rice, and lived out of town. 
He had got his office into such a perfect system 
that he could work it by attending a couple of 
hours a day. 

I replied laughingly, that the whole Civil 
Service, I made no doubt, would be willing to 
work their offices in the same way if they were 
allowed. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 83 



The London Press in 1849. 

The talk fell upon newspapers. I spoke of 
John Forster as a man it was impossible not to 
like, and whose hterary papers were often pleasant 
reading, but I could make nothing of his political 
articles in the Examiner, which seemed to me to 
have no settled policy or purpose. 

He replied that Forster for the most part advocated 
the theory of human affairs prevalent in fashionable 
Whig circles, if any one wanted to hear that sort 
of thing. He was a sincere, energetic, vehement 
fellow, who undertook any amount of labour to 
do service to one whom he knew, or, indeed, 
whom he did not know. Jane got the long bulky 

MS. of a novel from Miss , a scraggy little 

woman, with nothing beautiful or attractive about 
her to captivate or inflame him, but with an 
agreeable quality of talk, too ; and he read it 
through, cut objectionable things out of it, and 
prepared it, with much pains, as one could see, 
for the press, and it got read and talked about in 
London drawing-rooms. He was a man who 
liked to hve among people who meant honestly, 
and, on the whole, chose his company with 
tolerable success. If he got hold of any opinion 
that he came to believe, he made all manner of 
vehement noise and clatter over it, and forwarded 
it by every means he could devise ; but, if it 
fell into disrepute, and other people deserted it, 



84 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

he would just leave it there, and seek out some 
other fancy to fondle in place of it. Forster was 
not a man who had any serious truth to proclaim, 
or any purpose in life which he laid to heart, but 
he was infinitely friendly, and entirely sincere in 
his attachments. A good upright man, one might 
confidently say. 

I said I had asked Forster lately who it was that 
was writing feeble imitations of Fonblanque in the 
Examiner, since he had accepted office in the Board 
of Trade, and that I was surprised to learn that the 
writer was Fonblanque himself. The philosophical 
Radicals proclaimed Fonblanque to be the greatest 
journalist in England ; but, though he had skill 
and purpose, he seemed to me to altogether want 
passion and seriousness. His articles were pleasant 
reading enough, but Jeremy Bentham and Jonathan 
Wild did not always amalgamate naturally, and 
public interests could not be successfully treated in 
the spirit of an opera bouffe. 

Carlyle replied that Fonblanque was a better 
man than I supposed — a serious-looking fellow, 
with fire in his eyes, who seemed to consider that 
his task in the world was to expose fallacies of 
all sorts, which, in fact, he did with considerable 
adroitness and skill. I rejoined that his paper 
had been the organ of the educated Radicals who 
flourished in England in the Reform era, but that 
it had shifted round latterly to become a Govern- 
ment organ. Carlyle replied that Fonblanque had 
changed under the influence of circumstances, but 
not at all with conscious dishonesty. Lord 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 85 

Durham, when he came home, asked him to dinner, 
and he began to circulate up and down in 
society yonder in London, and so came to look 
at the doings of the Government from quite 
another point of view. As for philosophical 
Radicalism, he had said all that was in him to 
say on that subject, which, if well considered, 
was intrinsically barren. 

After a pause, he added that, among newspaper 
men, Rintoul, a Scotch printer, who owned the 
Spectator, was a man of deeper insight than any 
of them — a man altogether free from romantic or 
visionary babblement or the ordinary echoes of 
parliamentary palaver. He was the first man in 
England who openly declared his complete disbelief 
in Reform and the Whigs, and now it was every- 
where seen that his opinions were sound. He 
wrote the literary papers in his journal ; there was 
nothing very deep in them, but neither were they 
ever mere wind ; they meant something always. 
He speculated on the functions and uses of 
literature in a very natural manner. But he 
believed in nothing, and had but a poor barren 
theory of life, one might perceive. He was 
essentially a diligent and upright man, and he 
turned out a newspaper which, on the whole, was 
the best article of that kind to be found anywhere 
in England just now. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



Talfourd. 



In connection with journalism I mentioned 
Talfourd, and said I had read his dramas with 
profound disappointment, and could never get over 
the conviction that his reputation was the result 
of unduly favourable criticism by his literary asso- 
ciates of two generations. 

Carlyle said not so in any sinister sense. He 
had lived among literary people from the time of 
Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt, had probably done 
them many kindnesses, and kept coquetting with 
letters from that time to this, and so they took an 
interest in him and praised his plays — over-praised 
them probably ; but Talfourd had not stimulated or 
invited this sort of notice. It was quite true, how- 
ever, that his reputation was entirely undeserved. 
There was no potency in him ; nothing beyond 
the common, unless it was a sort of pathetic loyalty 
to his earliest associates. He had learned some- 
thing of Charles Lamb's fantastic method of looking 
at things. Lamb had no practical sense in him, 
and in conversation was accustomed to turn into 
quips and jests whatever turned up — an ill example 
to younger men, who had to live their lives in a 
world which was altogether serious, and where it 
behoved them to consider their position in a spirit 
quite other than jocose ; for a wrong path led to 
the nether darkness. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. S-j 



Captain Sterling. 

I asked him about Captain Sterling, the Thun- 
derer. He described his early career, which is now 
sufficiently known, and passed on to his method 
of fabricating his thunderbolts. The Captain, he 
said, used to drive about London, and mix in 
society, and visit clubs all the forenoon. He heard 
what all manner of men said on the topics of the 
day, and at night sat down in his study and re- 
produced the express essence of what people were 
thinking, as no one else in England could do. 
The old pagan was far and away the greatest 
popular journalist of our day. He saw deeper into 
things than Cobbett, and had an equally clear, 
vigorous, incisive expression. 

It was Sterling who carried the Tunes round to 
the Tories. He saw that there was no good likely 
to come out of the Whigs, and that on the whole 
Peel was better entitled to support. It was 
rumoured up and down, in the trivial talk of 
London, that the Times was paid for this change, 
but this was altogether a mistake. Sterling had 
acted on his knowledge and convictions, and they 
soon came to be the convictions of his employers. 
In the end the poor fellow lost his intellect by a 
paralytic stroke. Afterwards he would talk sen- 
sibly enough, but his talk wanted sequence and 
connection. At worst he never uttered mere non- 
sense. Since his death people missed his writings 



88 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

considerably, which was by no means wonderful 
when one considered the despicable makeshifts and 
inane trivialities which formed the bulk of what 
was called newspaper literature. Antony, whom 
1 had met at Cheyne Row and elsewhere — Major 
Sterling — was his son. 



"Sartor Resartus." 

As we were approaching Cork, he told me there 
was a man there it would please him to see face to 
face if possible. When he was publishing "Sartor," 
only two men on the face of the globe recognised 
in it anything beyond bewildered bedlamite rhap- 
sodies. One of them was Emerson, then a Uni- 
tarian preacher in America ; the other a Cork priest 
named O'Shea. Both of them wrote to Fraser, and 
said, "Let us have more of * Teufelsdrockh,' for 
the man decidedly means something." At that time 
it was not at all a question of renown, but a 
question of living or not living, and he was very 
grateful to these men for a timely word of en- 
couragement. 

I told him nothing was easier than seeing Father 
O'Shea. He would be sure to meet him at the 
table of some of my friends in Cork, or we would 
call on him if he preferred. 

Carlyle then proceeded to say he wrote the 
" Sartor" in a farm-house in the wilds of Dumfries- 
shire, where he and his wife lived, far enough 
away from any intelligible creature. Their nearest 



THOMAS CARLYLE, 89 

neighbours lay five miles off — a respectable kind 
of people whom his wife had been connected with 
before marriage, but who thought him, as he was 
poor enough at this time, a strange, dreamy sort 
of fellow, who had nothing in him, and he regarded 
their talk about as much as the croaking of jack- 
daws. He and his wife sometimes visited his 
mother-in-law, who lived fifteen miles away, and 
his own father and mother were at a still more 
inaccessible distance, and they lived quite alone for 
the most part for seven years. It was here he 
wrote all the early reviews, but as they produced 
a small and altogether precarious income he deter- 
mined to write a book, and he wrote " Sartor," and 
brought it up to London. No respectable book- 
seller would buy it from him, or so much as publish 
it. He found the literature of London at that time 
in a distracted condition, and he determined to 
remain throughout the winter, and observe it at 
closer quarters. In the end Fraser consented to 
take "Sartor" for some small sum — he believed it 
must have been about eighty pounds — conditioning, 
however, to put fifty copies of it together in volumes, 
and this was the way the book got itself published. 
He might add that when Fraser consented to put 
" Sartor " into his magazine, he cut down the 
payment £^ a sheet, to mark his moderate estimate 
of the book. When he produced fifty copies of the 
entire thing collected together, half-a-dozen were 
sent to men of letters in Edinburgh, not one of 
whom as much as acknowledged the receipt. 

I asked him if the judgment of the bookseller's 



90 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

taste, prefixed to " Sartor," was genuine. He said 
certainly it was genuine. It was the verdict of 
one of Murray's critics ; Lockhart was believed to 
be the man.-^ His opinion was altogether more 
favourable, if any one cared to know, than the 
writers of the Athenaeum, and the like of them, 
pronounced on the book when it was at last 
published as a whole. He had not found literature 
a primrose path ; quite otherwise, indeed. His 
earliest experiments had failed altogether to find 
acceptance from able editors, and when, at length, 
he came to be recognised as a writer who had 
something to say, editors were still alarmed at 
the unheard-of opinions he promulgated, and pro- 
bably because he did not wear the recognised 
literary livery of the period. He had tried for 

^ I. Highest Class Bookseller's Taster. 

Taster to Bookseller. — " The Author of Tenfelsdr'dckh is a person 
of talent ; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought 
and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge ; but whether or 
not it would take with the public seems doubtful. For 2i,jeu (P esprit 
of that kind it is too long : it would have suited better as an essay 
or article than as a volume. The Author has no great tact ; his wit 
is frequently heavy ; and reminds one of the German baron who 
took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was learning to be 
lively. Is the work a translation ? " 

Bookseller to Editor. — "Allow me to say that such a writer 
requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an 
able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. 
to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accom- 
plished German scholar ; I now enclose you his opinion, which, you 
may, rely upon it, is a just one ; and I have too high an opinion of 
your good sense to," &c. &c. — MS. {penes nos), London, i^tk 
September 1831. 



. THOMAS CARLYLE. gi 

some permanent place in life with little avail, and 
had commonly eaten bread as hardly earned as any 
man's bread in England. He could testify that the 
literary profession, as it is called, had not been to 
him by any means a land flowing with milk and 
honey. He might say, were it of any moment at 
all, that though he had a certain faculty of work in 
him, the woman who manufactured the last sensa- 
tional novel had probably got more money for a 
couple of her strange ventures than he had been 
paid by the whole bookselling craft from the 
beginning to that hour. 

I suggested that he had been ill-interpreted by 
messieurs the critics to readers to whom his 
writings were not only new, but were sure to be 
puzzling and alarming. 

As to criticism, he said Thackeray, John Sterling, [/ 
and John Mill had written of his work in various 
quarters with appreciation, and more than sufficient 
applause ; but criticism in general on books, and 
men, and things had become the idlest babble. 
Some of the foolishest and shallowest speculations 
about his books had appeared in the Revue des 
Deux Mondes by the editor ; but verj/ lately some 
papers on " Cromwell," by a writer named, or who 
signed himself " Montecut," contained a deeper , 
and truer estimate of his theory of life and human 
interests than he had met anywhere in a review 
before. 



92 THOMAS CARLYLE. 



' Method of Work. 

Speaking of his method of work, he said he 
had found the little wooden pegs, which washer- 
women employ to fasten clothes to a line, highly 
convenient for keeping together bits of notes and 
agenda on the same special point. It was his 
habit to paste on a screen in his workroom 
engraved portraits, when no better could be had, 
of the people he was then writing about. It kept 
the image of the man steadily in view, and one 
must have a clear image of him in the mind before 
it was in the least possible to make him be seen 
by the reader. 

I said it was hard to rely on portraits. I had 
seen in an exhibition in Paris a portrait of Robes- 
pierre at the climax of his influence, and he looked 
like a placid provincial practitioner whose brow 
had not broadened with power or wrinkled with 
responsibility ; and I added, laughing, that he was 
not in the least " sea-green." I saw at the same 
time two contemporary portraits of Louis XVI., 
borrowed from some historic chateau, as little like 
each other as Hamlet and Polonius. In one of 
them the artist had idealised the king's face into a 
certain strength and dignity ; the other might be 
taken as the caricature of a constitutional ruler — 
it was such a coarse commonplace countenance as 
the daguerreotype sometimes unexpectedly reveals, 
and a clumsy figure on which royal millinery looked 
quite out of place. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 93 

There was something in a genuine portrait, he 
said, which one could hardly fail to recognise as 
authentic. It looked like an actual man, with a 
consistent character, and left a permanent image in 
the memory. 



Emerson. 

Returning to the subject of Emerson and 
" Sartor," he told me much which is now familiar 
to every one, such as Emerson's unexpected visit 
to the Highlands, and his second visit to England, 
when he spent some days with Carlyle touring 
and visiting literary people, his issuing an edition 
of " Sartor " in America, and so forth. 

I asked him if Emerson's ideas could be regarded 
as original. He replied that Emerson had, in the 
first instance, taken his system out of "Sartor" 
and other of his (Carlyle's) writings, but he worked 
it out in a way of his own. It was based on 
truth, undoubtedly ; but Emerson constantly forgot 
that one truth may require to be modified by a 
precisely opposite truth. He had not a broad 
intellect, but it was clear and sometimes even 
profound. His writings wanted consistency and a 
decisive intelligible result. One was constantly 
disappointed at their suddenly stopping short and 
leading to nothing. They were full of beauties 
— diamonds, or at times, bits of painted glass, 
strung on a thread, which had no necessary 
connection with each other. He frequently hit 



94 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

upon isolated truths, but they remained isolated — 
they nowhere combined into an intelligible theory 
of life. 

I asked him if he found more in the man than 
in his writings. He said, No ; when they came 
to talk with each other their opinions were con- 
stantly found to clash. Emerson believed that 
every man's self-will ought to be cultivated, that 
men would grow virtuous and submissive to just 
authority, need no coercion, and all that sort of 
thing. He knew there were men up and down 
the world fit to govern the rest ; but he conceived 
that, when such a man was found, instead of being 
put in the seat of authority, he ought to be re- 
strained with fetters, as a thing dangerous and 
destructive. He bore, however, with great good 
humour the utter negation and contradiction of his 
theories. He had a sharp perking little face, and 
he kept bobbing it up and down with "Yissir, 
yissir" (mimicking) in answer to objections or ex- 
positions. He got mixed up with a set of philan- 
thropists, but I told him, Carlyle added, that we 
had long ago discovered what sort of a set they 
were, and that they would be mightily rejoiced to 
get any decent captain to march at their head. 
Emerson, however, could not be induced on any 
conditions to applaud their sordid peace, or preach 
their panacea of cold water. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 95 



Father O'Shea. 

He met Father O'Shea repeatedly at Cork. I 
was present during their interviews, but as he 
has given some account of them himself in the 
"Reminiscences," I naturally prefer it to my 
notes : — 

" Rain slightly beginning now, I return ; take 
to writing : near 1 1 o'clock, — announces himself 
' Father O'Shea ! ' (who I thought had been dead). 
To my astonishment enter a little greyhaired, intelli- 
gent-and-bred looking man, with much gesticulation, 
boundless loyal welcome, red with dinner and some 
wine, engages that we are to meet to-morrow, — 
and again with explosion of welcome, goes his 
way. This Father O'Shea, some 15 years ago, 
had been, with Emerson of America, one of the 
two sons of Adam who encouraged poor bookseller 
Fraser, and didn't discourage him, to go on with 
' Teufelsdrockh.' I had often remembered him 
since; had not long before ri^-inquired his name, 
but understood somehow that he was dead; — and 
now ! To bed, after brief good night to Duffy ; 
and, for rattling of window (masses of pamphlets 
will not still it) cannot, till near 5 a.m., get to sleep 
at all." 

Next day he met Father O'Shea at dinner with 
Mr. Denny Lane, another ex-political prisoner. 



96 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" Fine brown Irish figure, Denny [he says] ; 
distiller — ex-repaler ; frank, hearty, honest air ; 
like Alfred Tennyson a little." 

" Opposite me at dinner was Father O'Shea, 
didactic, loud-spoken, courteous, good every way — 
a true gentleman and priest in the Irish style. . . . 
Good O'Shea, who I hear labours diligently among 
a large poor flock ; [has] 3 or 4 curates : and 
though nothing of a bigot, seems truly a serious 
man." 

We made a brief stay at Killarney, our host 
being Shine Lalor, who had barely escaped im- 
prisonment in the late troubles. His residence. 
Castle Lough, was one of the show places of 
Killarney, and he brought Carlyle to the points of 
chief interest in the Lake district. There is a 
long account of this experience in the " Remi- 
niscences," but it does not invite citation. 



A Kerry Homestead. 

The land question was a constant topic, and one 
day, as we drove through the county Kerry, I 
interrupted a colloquy on Irish landlords, in which 
Carlyle was disposed to insist that difference of 
religion made the people unduly suspicious of them, 
by inviting him to get off our car, and enter some 
hut's on Lord Kenmare's estate, that he might judge 
for himself what sort of homes a landlord who 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 97 

professed the same creed as his tenants provided 
for them. Here is the account he gives in the 
"Reminiscences" of the district, the people, and 
their homes : — 

" Bare, blue, bog without limit, ragged people in 
small force working languidly at their scantlings 
or peats, no other work at all ; look hungry in 
their rags ; hopeless, air as of creatures sunk 
beyond hope. Look into one of their huts under 
pretence of asking for a draught of water; dark, 
narrow, two women nursing, other young woman 
on foot as if for work ; but it is narrow, dark, as 
if the people and their life were covered under a 
tub, or ' tied in a sack ; ' all things smeared over 
too with a liquid green; — the cow (I find) has her 
habitation here withal. No water ; the poor young 
woman produces butter-milk; in real pity I give 
her a shilling. Duffy had done the like in the ad- 
joining cottage, ditto, ditto in Charcuter, with the 
addition that a man lay in fever there. These were 
the wretchedest population I saw in Ireland. 
' Live, sir ? The Lord knows ; what we can beg, 
and rob,' (rob means scrape up; I suppose?): 
Lord Kinmare's people, he never looks after them, 
leases worthless bog, and I know not what. Bog 
all reclaimable, lime everywhere in it : swift exit 
to Lord Kinmare and the leases, or whatever the 
accursed incubus is ! " 

After we set out again on our journey, Carlyle 
said he often thought how like Ireland was to the 

G 



98 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Irish horse Larry, which he had up at Craigen- 
puttock. Larry sometimes broke into insubordina- 
tion, but, on the whole, he was one of the most 
generous, kindly, and affectionate fellows that one 
could anywhere encounter. Mrs. Carlyle became 
dissatisfied with her mount one day they were 
riding on the moors, and proposed to try Larry. 
Up to that moment Larry had been skittish and 
intractable, but after Jane got on his back he 
behaved himself like a gentleman. He was on 
honour, and conducted himself accordingly. 

I suggested that Larry, like his countrymen, 
knew when he was well-treated, and had a decided 
objection to perpetual whip and spur. 



Miss O'Neill. 

During our journey through the county Cork, 
Carlyle decided to visit Sir William and Lady 
Beecher, to whom he had brought introductions 
from Major Sterling, and he quitted me a day 
or two for this purpose. I was curious on his 
return to hear of Lady Beecher, who was once the 
famous Irish actress, Miss O'Neill. 

He said he could not contrive to like her. She 
was a striking figure, but she had cold, cruel eyes, 
and a silent, reserved air, which was altogether 
disagreeable. She lived in stern reserve, and 
imposed her rigorous formal character upon her 
household and everything about her. Her face 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 99 

might once have been handsome, but he did not 
think it ever could have been beautiful to him. It 
was now worn and faded, but her bearing was 
stately and striking. 

I asked if I was to imply that she played the 
tragedy queen in private life. 

No, he said, nothing could be more simple and 
systematic than her habits. She lived in constant 
obedience to what she called her duty, a sort of 
thrall of the Thirty-nine Articles and that sort of 
thing. Very sincerely, too, one could see. 

When he arrived she had evidently not liked 
him, and peered at him, through her cold blue eyes, 
half shut with anxious scrutiny ; but she came to 
like him better afterwards, and opened them a 
little. There was an immense portrait of her as 
Juliet, the one commonly engraved, he believed, 
which the artist had taken out to Russia when the 
Emperor brought him there, but his brother brought 
it back, and the old baronet purchased it. There 
was much more geniality and kindliness about the 
eyes in the portrait than the lady exhibited just 
now. She spoke about her former connection with 
the stage like one quite above all accidents of that 
kind — as a sovereign might speak of some incident 
of her early life in exile. There were two young 
daughters, the youngest really a lovely little lassie, 
and three boys ; two were going to be barristers, 
and one was a soldier in Canada. The old baronet, 
who was stricken with disease, was a fine simple 
old gentleman, and their house was a thorough 
English mansion. 



lOO THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Our meeting again at Limerick is noted in the 
" Reminiscences " : — 

** Long low street, parallel to our rail ; exotic in 
aspect, Lt'm^ plebs live there. — Station, strait con- 
fused ; amid rain ; — and Duffy stands there, with 
sad loving smile, a glad sight to me after all ; and 
so in omnibus, with spectre, blacksmith, and full 
fare of others, — (omnibus that couldii!t have a 
window opened) to 'Cruise's Hotel,' — Cruise him- 
self, a lean, eager-looking little man of forty, most 
reverent of Duffy, as is common here, riding with 
us. Private room ; and ambitious — bad dinner, 
kickshaws (sweetbreads, salmon, &'^) and uneat- 
ables." 

^^July 24. — Glove shop ; Limerick gloves, scarcely 
any made now ; buy a pair of cloth gloves ; n. b. 
have my gutta-percha shoes out soletng with leather, 
gutta having gone like toasted cheese on the paving 
in the late hot weather ; right glad to have leather 
shoes again ! Breakfast bad ; confused inanity of 
morning, settling, &'^ ; about noon Duffy goes away 
for Galway ; and I am to follow after a day. 
Foolish young Limerick philosopher, — a kind of 
'Young Limerick' {neither Old nor Young Ireland), 
in smoking room (wretched place), smokes with 
me while Duffy is packing to go ; showed me after- 
wards the locality of the Mitchel-and-Meagher 
tragi- comedy, and ciceroned me thro' the streets. 
Quaker Unthank at 3^ p.m. ; lean triangular visage 
(kind of ' Chemist,' I think), Irish accent, altogether 
English in thought, speech and ways. Rational 



THOMAS CARLYLE. loi 

exact man ; long before any other I could see in 
these parts." 

We had brief snatches of talk at Limerick when 
the day's sight-seeing was done. 



" Festus." 

I asked him if he knew anything of a poem 
called " Festus." A hard-headed young Scotchman 
wanted to give me a specimen of convenient book- 
binding, and offered me a volume, which he said I 
might take without scruple, as he would never open 
it again ; it was the maddest rhapsody ever printed 
in legible type. The book was "Festus," but I 
found it to be rich in poetry and sparkling with 
imagery of singular freshness and power. 

" Festus," he said, he had never read, but he 
understood it was "Faustus" in a new garment, a 
sort of lunar shadow of Faust. Having eaten his 
pudding he was content, and felt no inclination to 
eat it again rechauffe. The poem made a great 
sensation in New England, and might have merits 
of which he was not aware. A troublesome fool 
had volunteered to bring the author, Bailey, to 
Cheyne Row, and it was probable he (Carlyle) 
had not treated him well. He was abrupt and 
impatient, he believed, confounding Bailey with the 
fellow who had volunteered to be sponsor for him. 
The young man was writing just now for a Notting- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



ham newspaper of which his father was printer, or 
something of that sort. 



Irish History. 

It was inconceivable, he said one day, how 
Irishmen fought futile and forgotten battles over 
again. Petrie (artist and antiquary, whom he had 
met in Dublin) was still in a rage against Bryan 
Boroihrne for having upset the ancient constitution 
of Ireland — not a very serious calamity, one might 
surmise. It was working well, it seemed — or it 
seemed to Petrie, at any rate — till Bryan conquered 
and brought into subjection the subordinate princes. 
Bryan pleased the immortal gods, but the other 
parties • pleased Petrie. Bryan Boroihme, his 
friends and enemies, his conquests over Celts and 
Danes, presented to one's mind only interminable 
confusion and chaos, or if there might, as my head- 
shaking implied, be a ground-plan more or less 
intelligible, it was not worth searching for. But 
there was a period of Irish history really impres- 
sive and worthy to be remembered, when the 
island undoubtedly sent missionaries throughout all 
the world then known to mankind, when she was 
a sort of model school for the nations, and in 
verity an island of saints. A book worthy to be 
written by some large-minded Irishman was one 
on that period, accompanied by another, which un- 
happily would be a tragic contrast, on the present 
and future of the country. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 103 

I said it was an Irish "Past and Present" he 
desired, but I thought there was more need of an 
Irish " Chartism," a vehement protest against the 
wickedness of ignorant and persistent misgovern- 
ment. 

There was misgovernment enough in Ireland, he 
said, and in England too, where, however, it was 
encountered in an altogether different spirit. This 
longing after Bryan Boroihme was not a salutary- 
appetite. There was scarcely a man, he should say, 
among the whole catalogue of Bryan Boroihmes, 
worth the trouble of recalling. 

I suggested that they would compare favourably 
with the English rulers from Henry VIII. to 
George IV,, both august personages included. 



Henry VIII. 

Henry [he said], when one came to consider the 
circumstances he had to deal with, would be seen 
to be one of the best kings England had ever got. 
He had the right stuff in him for a king, he knew 
his own mind ; a patient, resolute, decisive man, 
one could see, who understood what he wanted, 
which was the first condition of success in any 
enterprise, and by what methods to bring it about. 
He saw what was going on in ecclesiastical circles 
at that time in England, and perceived that it could 
not continue without results very tragical for the 
kingdom he was appointed to rule, and he over- 



I04 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

hauled them efFectually. He had greedy, mutinous, 
unveracious opponents, and to chastise them was 
forced to do many things which in these sentimental 
times an enhghtened pubhc opinion [laughing] 
would altogether condemn ; but when one looked 
into the matter a little, it was seen that Henry for 
the most part was right. 

I suggested that, among the things he wanted 
and knew how to get, was as long a roll of wives 
as the Grand Turk. It would have been a more 
humane method to have taken them, like that 
potentate, simultaneously than successively ; he 
would have been saved the need of killing one 
to make room for another, and then requiring 
Parliament to disgrace itself by sanctioning the 
transaction. 

Carlyle replied that this method of looking at 
King Henry's life did not help much to the under- 
standing of it. He was a true ruler at a time 
when the will of the Lord's anointed counted for 
something, and it was likely that he did not 
regard himself as doing wrong in any of these 
things over which modern sentimentality grew so 
impatient. 



thomas carlyle. 105 

The Chelsea Philosophy. 

Apropos of the difficulty most people would have 
in accepting his theory of Henry's character (which 
the reader will remember was not yet gilded and 
varnished by Mr. Froude), I spoke of other difficulties. 
I told him a scoffing friend of mine suggested that 
the Chelsea Philosophy included two theories 
impossible to reconcile ; one insisted that a man 
without a purpose in life was no better than carrion, 
the other that a man who affirmed that he had a 
purpose was a manifest quack and impostor. For 
myself, I said, I found a difficulty of a similar 
nature, which I would be glad to have cleared 
up. He taught that a man of genius is commonly 
quite unconscious of the gift, and he treated with 
contempt as a cheat any one who professed to be 
so endowed. Suppose, I added, I ask you. Are you 
a man of genius ? If you say No, how am I to 
accept that as a satisfactory answer ? If you say 
Yes, consider on your own theory what consequence 
follows. 

He laughed, and said that, with proper deductions 
for the practical purpose in view on each occasion, 
all this would be found to be altogether in harmony. 
As to himself, a forlorn and heavily laden mortal, 
with many miseries to abolish, or subdue into silence, 
he made no claim to preternatural endowments of 
any sort ; few mortals less. As for genius, genius 
was in some senses strict vigilance, veracity, and 



io6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

fidelity to fact, which every mortal must cherish if 
his life was not to have a tragic issue. After a 
long pause of silent meditation he went on : — 

One had to accept the manifest facts ; how else ? 
Not one man in a million spoke truth in these 
times, or acted it, and hence the condition of things. 
Thousands of wretches in the poor-house, and 
hundreds busy fox-hunting or foreign touring in 
complete indifference to them. A man of the rascal 
species, who set up a bank of lies as his capital 
and equipment in life, could not have existed before 
the last century ; but now you found a man of 
that class wherever you turned up and down the 
world. Plain dealing and frank speaking seemed 
to have vanished. Every year it was harder and 
harder to get an honest article of any fabric — a 
thing which was what it purported to be, or was 
not something shamefully the reverse of that. Our 
forlorn time might be called the age of shoddy. 
The inevitable end and net result of this sort of 
thing was one which he need not be at the trouble 
of specifying. 

I told him that a lively young man of my ac- 
quaintance insisted that there was something to be 
said for shoddy. For his part, he did not want , 
coats, trousers, hats, and handkerchiefs to last for 
ever, and make a man look like a caricature of 
himself. If they lasted a shorter time, they cost 
less, and you could renew them oftener. A hat 
thajt would look well for twelve months, if ever there 
was such a hat, cost a sum for which you could 
equip yourself with a shoddy hat once a quarter, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. id; 

having freshness as well as novelty of structure. 
And women were able to dress infinitely better and 
more effectively at the same cost under the shoddy 
system. 

Yes, he said, there was always an advocatiis 
Diaholi who had a good word for his distinguished 
client, but the less men trafficked in that sort of 
commodity the better it would be for them in the 
long run. 



Buckle. 

I asked him about Buckle. I had recently read 
the first volume of his introduction to a " History of 
Civilisation in England," and thought it exhibited 
prodigious reading and a remarkable power of 
generalisation ; but the style seemed to me clumsy, 
and coloured with perpetual egotism. Carlyle said 
he could not be pestered reading the book beyond 
the extracts one found in the weekly papers. 
Buckle had a theory of life one could see to which 
he required his facts to infallibly correspond — at 
their peril \laughing\. 

I suggested that Mr. Buckle had gathered 
valuable materials. Macaulay, with the same facts, 
would have written half-a-dozen essays, which 
would become familiar to every reading household 
in England ; and there was another writer who 
would have extracted the essential oil from them 
to better purpose. Buckle's theory was that the 
world owed its progress, not to the influence of 



io8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

religion or the arts of civilisation, but to what he 
called inquiry — meaning scepticism. From it, he 
insisted, came religious liberty and the gradual re- 
cognition of political rights. Nations were misled, 
he affirmed, by not sufficiently investigating natural 
causes. He regarded the human race as the bond- 
slaves of external phenomena ; a rich soil or a 
temperate climate produced wealth, and civilisation 
followed but never preceded the creation of capital. 
Civilisation sprang up in an alluvial soil, or under 
a genial sky ; and the distribution of wealth, as 
well as its creation, was governed entirely by 
physical laws. The Philosopher of Chelsea taught 
that the course of history was regulated by the lives 
of great men ; Mr. Buckle insisted that it was 
regulated by the course of great rivers. 

The eternal laws of the universe, Carlyle said, 
told an altogether different story, and the man who 
refused to recognise them, or insisted on recon- 
structing the world on a theory of his own, was 
not worth the pains of listening to. 

People kept asking him, " Have you read 
Buckle's book ? " but he answered that he had not, 
and was not at all likely to do so. He saw bits of 
it from time to time in reviews, and found nothing 
in them but shallow dogmatism and inordinate 
conceit. English literature had got into such a 
condition of falsity and exaggeration that one may 
doubt if we should ever again get a genuine book. 
Probably not. There were no longer men to write 
or. to read them, and the ultimate result of that 
sort of thing was one which might be conceived. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 109 



Mazzini, 



I asked him about the party of Young Italy and 
its leader. Mazzini, he said, was a diminutive, 
dark-visaged, little fellow, with bright black eyes, 
about the stature of that newspaper Barry whom 
we had encountered at Cork.-^ Mazzini was a 
perfectly honourable and true man, but possessed 
by wild and fanciful theories borrowed from the 
French Republicans. He believed in George Sand 
and that sort of cattle, and was altogether un- 
acquainted with the true relation of things in this 
world. The best thing that had ever befallen him 
was the opening of his letters by Sir James 
Graham ; he was little known in London before 
that transaction ; known, in fact, to few people 
except the circle in Cheyne Row. But afterwards 
he had innumerable dinner invitations, and got 
subscriptions up and down London for his ItaHan 
schools and other undertakings, 

(Diary, 1854). — I spoke to Mrs. Carlyle of 
Mazzini, whose name just then was a good deal 
in the newspapers. She said his character, which 
was generous and self-devoted, was greatly spoiled 
by a spirit of intrigue. He was always think- 
ing what advantage he could get out of every 
occurrence. 

Advantage for his cause ? I queried. 

^ Michael Joseph Barry, then editor of the Southern Reporter. 



no THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Yes, advantage for his cause, she said ; but by 
methods such a man should scorn. It was he 
who planned the dinner of revolutionists at the 
American consul's lately, which got the American 
ambassador into such a scrape. The consul, a 
young American — Sa|inders was probably his 
name — pestered Mazzini to dine with him. He 
would only consent on condition that Garibaldi, 
Kossuth, Ledru-Rollin, and the rest were invited. 
An old Pole, it was said, had to borrow a sovereign 
to get his uniform out of pawn. Mazzini expected 
great results in Italy and Hungary from the false 
interpretation which would be put on this dinner 
with an American official. Ledru-Rollin and 
Kossuth, who hated each other, met there for 
the first time, and probably never again. In fact, 
it was all a stage play, which Mazzini expected to 
produce the effect of a sincere and serious trans- 
action.'^ 

I said I had supposed him too grave and proud 
for anything like a trick. She said he was certainly 
grave and dignified, but he sometimes uttered 
trivial sentimentalities, with this air of gravity and 
dignity, in a way that was intensely comic. He 
was entirely engrossed in his purpose, however, 
while one of his brother triumvirs, a successor of 

^ "On Tuesday last, the eve of Washington's birthday, G. 
N. Sanders, Esq., the American consul at London, gave an inter- 
national dinner at his residence, when there were present Mr. 
Buchanan, Kossuth, Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Sir J. Walmsley, 
M.P:, Garibaldi, Worcell, Orsini, Pulsky, Hertzen, and Mr. Welsh, 
attache to the Legation in London." — Ilhistrated London News, 
Feb. 25, 1854. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



Rienzi in the government of Rome, actually wrote 
to London to say that the Westminster Review need 
not despair of an article he had promised, he would 
send it with the delay of a month or two. This 
was a national tribune pour rire. 



Lynch Law. 

Speaking of strikes, Carlyle said artisans had 
probably been ill-used ; injustice was to be met 
with in all departments of human affairs, but they 
had attempted to right themselves by methods 
which could on no account be tolerated — syste- 
matised outrages resembling the ugly gambols of 
Lynch law beyond the Atlantic. 

I suggested that something might be said for 
Lynch law. It was the only chivalry of the old 
type left in the world, which righted wrongs and 
chastised evil-doers for the simple love of justice. 
Its officials might be regarded by imaginative 
persons as the knight-errants of the nineteenth 
century. 

Carlyle laughed, and said they were knights 
worthy of the century ; blind, passionate, ignorant 
of real justice, and intolerably self-confident in 
their ignorance. Lynch law was the invention of 
a people given to loud talk and self-exhibition, 
who had done nothing considerable in the world 
that he had ever heard of. 

At Galway our host was a man who had 
afterwards a remarkable career — Edward Butler, 



112 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

then the editor of a Nationalist journal, who had 
been a State prisoner recently, and became a few 
years later leader of the Sydney bar and Attorney- 
General of New South Wales. In the " Remini- 
scences " Carlyle notes a curious rencontre at this 
time : — ■ 

" Hospitable luncheon from this good editor, 
Duffy's sM^-editor now, I think ; — in great tumult, 
in blazing dusty sun, we do get seated in the 
' Tuam Car,' quite full and — Walker [introduction 
from Major Sterling, brother of John Sterling] 
recognising me, inviting warmly both Duffy and 
me to his house at Sligo, and mounting up beside 
me, also for Tuam this night, — roll prosperously 
away, Duffy had almost rubbed shoulders with 
Attorney- General Monahan ; a rather sinister polite 
gentleman in very clean linen, who strove hard to 
have got him hanged lately, but couldn't, such was 
the bottomless condition of the thing called ' Law ' 
in Ireland." 

The Queen's College, of which Galway seemed 
to be particularly proud, planted on the lonely and 
desolate shores of Lough Corrib, opposite the poor- 
house, appeared to Carlyle like a reduced gentle- 
man sitting in the mud waiting for relief from the 
establishment over the way. 

On our journey towards Sligo an incident 
occurred so unexpected and characteristic that it 
deserves to be mentioned. We were inside pas- 
sengers by a mail coach, and before it started a 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 129 

even in Ireland's night of 1849, 'shall shine more 
and more unto the perfect day.' Your temptations, 
and open and disguised impediments, I discern too 
well, will be many; but the task is great, and, if 
you front them well, the prize, too, is great. Courage, 
patience, the eye to see and the heart to endure and 
do, may these be yours, and all that follows from 
them ! 

"To-day I have already written two letters, all 
on Ireland, and must not go deep into the subject 
again just now. Your account of the potato failure 
is much stronger than I have yet gathered else- 
where, though it corresponds in tendency with what 
I saw in Scotland, where the miserable roots were 
daily getting spotted more and more, yet it was 
without that murrain rapidity of '46, and one's con- 
clusion then was that nobody could yet say or 
guess to what extent it might go. Anyway, there 
cannot now be any ' famine ' as in '46 ; poor-rates 
being everywhere established, and the potatoes, 
rotted or not, being now altogether the property of 
the farmer, properly of the landlord, to be struggled 
for between ikem, the poor cottier having now no 
share in that game at all. May they rot, I say, 
always; may the past existence of Ireland remain 
_pasi, unrestorable by human cowardice or cunning 
any more in this world ! Alas ! even rotted they 
will do much mischief still ; they will for years to 
come make of agriculture a kind of gambling, or at 
least keep alive an element of that kind in it, per- 
nicious in all pursuits of men. A farmer in the 

I 



I30 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Perth region, I was told repeatedly, had gained 
;^2000 by his potatoes alone last year; the prices 
in London were some sixfold, and the Perth man's 
potatoes had lived. This year it is likely enough 
they may have died, and his loss — nay, who can 
estimate his loss (if there really be a soul in him) 
whether they have died or lived. 

" You are surely right in what you argue about 
the state of the land : that it is a covenant of iniquity, 
clean contrary to God Almighty's law, and conform- 
able only to my Lord Chancellor's law, that now 
gives a ploughing man access to Irish soil (and you 
may add Scottish and English and European if you 
like) ; a terrible solecism — alas ! alas ! the outcome 
of a million other silent and spoken solecisms; of 
all owY solecisms, cants, cowardices, and contraven- 
tions of the everlasting Acts of Heaven's Parliament ! 
The sight of it, fallen upon us in its naked horror, 
and the thought, how far beyond the most distant 
mountains the sources of it lie, and the remedies of 
it lie, may well make a man sad. 

" You are sure of my poor sympathy, and of all 
good men's on this side of the water or on that, in 
any feasible attempt to improve even a little that 
misery of miseries. In ' land tenure ' itself, or the 
direct question of tenant and landlord, it is possible 
some considerable improvement might by express 
law be brought about ; but I confess the figure of 
an ' Act of Parliament ' that could rectify all that is 
inconceivable; and even of one that could tend at 
all decidedly to rectify it, I have no clear notion 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 131 

hitherto. If you have, by all means explain it 
publicly, but not till you have studied it well, and 
talked with lawyers, political economists, and all 
such classes upon it. What they have to say, were 
it even all false, has to be taken along with one, and 
known both to be, and to be a falsity. The 'land 
tenure ' in England, you perhaps are not aware, is 
precisely what your Irish one is, in that most 
essential respect that the tenant has no lease. 
Generally throughout this South of England leases 
are not known, or only beginning to be known ; 
yet nowhere in the Queen's dominions does the 
farmer, with all his workers, sit so easy. From the 
practice of England you will get no help ; I think 
the Scotch law, if it were investigated with that 
view, would be found to yield you something. Did 
you ever speak with Hancock on the subject ? He 
is full of zealous notions on that or kindred matters, 
and speaks from under a wig withal. On the whole 
be practical, be feasible, that is the one condition ; 
support in abundance awaits you here if that be 
complied with. 

" Also do not much mind Linton, who is a well 
enough meaning but, I fear, extremely windy crea- 
ture, of the Louis Blanc, George Sand, &c., species. 
And more power to your elbow every way, and 
always more. — Yours ever sincerely, 

"T. CARLYLE." 

"One Espinasse, a young Edinburgh man, now 
and for some years past in Manchester, I accident- 



132 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



ally learn, has written to you, offering services, 
which have been dechned. Very well, upon that 
be there no return. But, somehow, I feel that you 
do not probably understand this poor young man, 
and that I ought to say a word in explanation of 
him. Poor fellow ! he is a kind of hero this little 
Espinasse, and is now threatened with changing into 
a kind of Scotch Rousseau, so unpropitious are the 
elements to him. An excellent scholar, especially 
in German, &c., full of exact information on all 
manner of subjects, discernment sharp as a hawk's 
(especially on the satirical side) ; in all ways an 
honourable, proudly veracious, anti-humbug little 
fellow (strange as you may think it), and very much 
to be relied on for doing whatsoever he undertakes 
to do. Of a contemptuous, proud temper, as I say, 
though honest to the bone ; that is really the man's 
character if you can believe me, who have known 
him for several years. Of late I find he has once 
or twice taken to the most flagrant imitation of me, 
which looks absurd and almost mad, quite unfit for 
any journal, but I assure you he can write in quite 
other styles than that, and used to do literary, &c., 
articles for the Manchester Exammer very well 
indeed, till he took some huff at them. In the 
interest of suffering humanity, and for the sake of 
a young man of real superiority, I testify these 
things. In the name of the Prophet, figs ! " 

Carlyle never saw Mr. Linton, and misunderstood 
him, I think. W. J. Linton, the well-known wood- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 133 

engraver (and who, judging him by the illustrations 
of one of his own poems, was also an artist of pro- 
fuse fancy and skilful pencil), was less a French 
republican of the school of George Sand and Louis 
Blanc, than an English republican of the school of 
Milton and Cromwell, to which Carlyle himself may 
be said to have belonged. Like many gifted young 
Englishmen of the time, he found himself drawn 
towards the Nation, and contributed to it largely in 
prose and verse. The prose was, for the most part, 
controversial, justifying or illustrating opinions on 
which he differed with the editor; the poetry was 
incitements towards a generous and lofty nationality. 
I was delighted at the time, and still recall with 
pleasure the pictures he drew of the future we aimed 
to create. The sympathic reader will not regret, I 
think, to make acquaintance with one little poem of 
this class. 

"THE HAPPY LAND. 

" The Happy Land ! 

Studded with cheerful homesteads, fair to see, 
With garden grace and household symmetry ; 
How grand the wide-brow'd peasant's lordly mien, 
The matron's smile serene ! 

O happy, happy land ! 

" The happy land ! 

Half-hid in dewy grass, the mower blithe 
Sings to the day-star as he whets his scythe ; 
And to his babes, at eventide again, 
Carols as blithe a strain. 

O happy, happy land ! 



134 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" The happy land ! 

Where, in the golden sheen of autumn eves, 
The bright-hair'd children play among the sheaves 
Or gather ripest apples all the day, 
As ruddy-cheek'd as they. 

O happy, happy land ! 

" O happy land ! 

The thin smoke curleth through the frosty air, 
The light smiles from the windows ; hearken there 
To the white grandsire's tale of heroes old — 
To flame-eyed listeners told, 

O happy, happy land ! 

" O happy, happy land ! 

The tender-foliaged alders scarcely shade 
Yon loitering lover and glad blushing maid. 
O happy land ! the Spring that quickens thee 
Is Human Liberty ! 

O happy, happy land ! " 



A few days later, I was gratified by a note express- 
ing emphatic and quite unprecedented approval of 
what I was labouring to effect in Ireland. All my 
colleagues in the earlier Nation were either dead, 
exiled, suffering the penalties of the law of treason, 
or (in a very few cases) disheartened by failure. I 
aimed to enlist recruits to fill their places, but I did 
not conceal from such new-comers the hard terms 
the service of Ireland imposed, or that the class of 
work to be done in the existing condition of the 
country would be slow and obscure. They were no 
longer invited, as of old, to share in literary projects ; 
reviving historical traditions or singing madrigals was 
scarcely an honest employment in such a country. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 135 

Our ship was a wreck on the waters, floating fast 
towards the breakers ; whoever could help to raise 
the shattered masts aloft, or unravel the tangled 
ropes, would be thrice welcome. Carlyle's approval 
was a strong incentive to press on. 



" Chelsea, Tuesday, October 2, 1849. 

" Capital article, dear Duffy, that in last Nation : 
' Wanted, a few Workmen ! ' To every word and 
tone of that I say, Amen. Stand by that ; that is 
the real text to preach innumerable sermons from. 
Properly the one result to be striven for ; all other 
results whatsoever to be measured precisely by their 
effect towards accomplishing of this ! / call this 
the best article I ever read on Ireland ; a noble 
* eloquence ' in this, the eloquence of sorrow, indig- 
nation, and belief Cart is not put before horse in 
these utterances of yours, the first time I have ever 
seen that condition observed (that I can remember) 
by any patriotic Irish writer or speaker whatsoever. 

" Steady, steady ! Hold on in that course, which 
will spread out wide as the world for you, and you 
will do immense good ; 2Lt fiat ! — In great haste, 
yours, T. Carlyle." 



Sympathetic readers will be curious to see what 
sort of an article in a Nationalist journal Carlyle 
could pronounce the best he had ever read on 
Ireland ; and if I gratify this sentiment by printing 



135 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

it, the reader, I trust, will understand that I would 
do so with less hesitation if it were the work of any 
one else. 



" WANTED, A FEW WORKMEN. 

" Ireland has urgent need of workmen, able and 
willing to work — of men who will gradually create 
about them, each in his own city, hamlet, or narrow 
corner, a circle of light and vital warmth, where 
there is now ignorance and lethargy, 

" It is singular to remark how the obscurest and 
the most conspicuous offices of public service have 
become vacant together. The panorama of history 
nowhere presents a great stage so nearly deserted, 
or on which the prizes of generous ambition are so 
feebly contested. 

** But competitors, high and low, must be called 
forth again, and the ardour of a noble rivalry re- 
awakened, or the hope of rebuilding Ireland from 
her ruins, is a dream. Unless there are labourers 
sufficient for the labour, the very attempt becomes a 
cheat or a jest. 

"The generous young men who last bore the 
heat of the contest have received the wages that 
oftenest pay heroic toil. They stood in the front 
rank, nearest the danger, and they have been struck 
down. They are now pining in exile or seething 
in prison-ships, and Ireland, it is said, is slavishly 
indifferent to their fate. This is the very hour when 
we demand with most confidence new recruits to fill 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 137 

their places. For it is in the hour of her moral 
eclipse that our country moves the profoundest pity 
and devotion ; and the men capable of helping her 
in this extremity are plainly men not to be enlisted 
by cockades or bounty, by promises of easy triumph 
or visions of personal distinction. If there be not 
many candidates who will undertake her service, 
knowing the wages — men ready to work in obscure 
toil, willingly embraced and patiently persisted in, 
without the encouragement of applauding hands or 
glorification of any sort for the present, we have seen 
the latter end of Celtic Ireland. 

" If there be practical capacity anywhere in this 
country, it never had a more favourable field in the 
world. No class of interest is so adequately repre- 
sented as to shut its ears to intelligible counsel, if 
it could hear it. Few offices, under popular control, 
are so satisfactorily occupied that men do not desire 
and speculate upon a change for the better. The 
very offices of Government are vacant — nearly as 
vacant as if a revolution had given up Dublin Castle 
to the people. Whoever is able to perform the 
duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland 
efficiently, or Minister of Public Works and Indus- 
trial Progress, or Minister of Public Instruction, will 
find the place vacant, waiting for his coming. Not 
the official uniform, and the salary, indeed ; but the 
power to create and guide operations, and get work 
done — the true essence of authority. 

"The places are vacant, but the list of candi- 
dates who have hitherto appeared with claims worth 



138 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

considering is very scanty. The difficulty in ejecting 
usurpers is exactly the want of successors worthy 
of succeeding ; and nothing more. 

" Spouting, speeching, and operations of that sort 
can be performed by a large proportion of the adult 
population of this island. The faculty of writing 
sonorous and swelling sentences is nearly as 
common. O'Connell made a guerilla of ruthless 
speechifiers who disturbed the peace of private 
society with the thunder of their afternoon elo- 
quence ; and Young Ireland must plead guilty to 
having created ' a mob of gentlemen who write with 
ease.' But there is no country in Europe where 
there is so little practical genius, practical skill, or 
fruitful practical knowledge as in Ireland. The 
smallest official trained in the petty routine of public 
business, the dullest intermittent commissioner who 
does 'jobs ' for the Executive, has generally more 
administrative capacity than some of the best of our 
public men. The grand, romantic, and picturesque 
fire the Irish imagination ; but it plunges restlessly 
in the harness of practical work. And mark the 
result on our popular institutions. We have Irish 
members who originate nothing ; Irish corporations 
bankrupt in funds, character, and influence; Irish 
boards of guardians replaced by paid officials, who 
do the work better, to the deep discredit and per- 
manent injury of the country. 

" Whoever knows anything of the administration 
of public institutions or political societies amongst 
us, knows that, however large the body may be, the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 139 

actual labour falls on half-a-dozen men. It does 
not seem possible to get a larger number together 
in Ireland who will do habitual work. Yet a country 
is framed and shaped, lost or won, not by institu- 
tions, but by the individual labours of men. Better 
a dozen men like Thomas Davis than an Irish 
Parliament; for a dozen Thomas Davises would 
imply that conquest, and many others more im- 
possible to ordinary capacity. Such men, working 
together cordially for an honest purpose, multiply 
their mutual strength in a ratio too subtle for arith- 
metic. Twice five is often equal, not to ten, but to 
ten hundred. It is precisely workmen who will 
work in this spirit Ireland has need of 

"Our soil, climate, sea, situation — the capacious 
harbours so much more familiar to eloquence than 
at Lloyd's, the mill sites, the water powers, the 
immultiplicable treasures that lie locked up in Irish 
soil, of which we have sung and said so much — 
what are they but the tools of men — the tools with 
which they may glorify races, and build up States, 
if they will ? And here are the tools awaiting 
the young men of Ireland — plentiful as they ever 
were in any country on the earth, and obedient 
to the hands that will learn to wield them. The 
devil and all his angels could not keep them from 
possessing this country if they were worthy of 
it. Even now, thinned and scattered as they are 
by exile and emigration, they have immeasurably 
a stronger hold upon Ireland than the Queen, 
Lords, and Commons of Great Britain, if they had 



I40 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

virtue to make a noble use of their capacity and 
opportunity, 

" The waste lands, waste resources, waste powers, 
even the waste labour of Ireland (shut up in work- 
houses) is not so strange a violation of national 
economy as these waste opportunities — waste simply 
for want of the individual enterprise and action so 
common in other countries. In America, the forest 
is scarcely cleared by the Irish pioneer till a city 
springs up, and mill wheels are whirling and 
engines panting, and soon a hundred miles of iron 
railway links the city of yesterday with the great 
marts of the Republic and the distant centres of 
commerce in the Old World. In Australia, where 
the kangaroo and the cannibal shared the silent 
shores a few years ago, when Ireland was fighting 
for religious liberty, cities have grown up which 
already vie in riches, and even in social organisa- 
tion, with many of the old fountainheads of civilisa- 
tion in Europe. It is true these countries have 
wide territory, and are not pressed upon by old 
domineering institutions; but the essential differ- 
ence does not lie here, but in the hopefulness and 
irrepressible energy with which men work in these 
new, growing countries. Ireland is new ; Ireland 
is unexhausted and untried ; and, if we set de- 
liberately to work, filling up the details of a great 
design day by day, we would see similar results 
accomplished; to-day clearing awa:y old rubbish, 
to-morrow laying a foundation-stone; quarrying 
materials here, training workmen there ; till the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 141 

design, of which the ignorant could discern little 
or nothing in the rude details, stood revealed at last 
a perfect and eternal work. 

" If it be possible to get together a small number 
of men who understand these deficiencies, and will 
conscientiously endeavour to amend them, in them- 
selves and others, it will be a good beginning. 
Such a brotherhood, like the modern giant of steam, 
would find no work too heavy or too light for it. 
They might preach the rights of the poor with the 
burning zeal of a Howard or a Vincent de Paul, and 
teach the ignorant with the patient, humble assiduity 
of Gerald Griffin. At lowest, they would take care 
to master with anxious study the principles of all 
weighty measures prescribed to the people, and 
refuse to cry out that this or that was a remedy 
without making sure as life and death that it was 
so. And, having made sure of the right, they 
would refuse to sit still while anything remained to 
be done to advance and accomplish it. Ireland is 
falling to ruin for want of workmen like these. 

" Let such young men as feel honestly called to 
help us in this design send us their names, and they 
will be enrolled in a company from which we pre- 
dict substantial and permanent services to Ireland. 
But it is workmen we want. With idle politicians, 
amateur politicians, trading pohticians we propose 
to transact no business. One hour from the man 
who gives ten to his own proper pursuits will be 
precious. Ten hours from the student who is feed- 
ing his spirit with heroic generous purposes, and 



142 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

training his intellect in the school of public affairs, 
will be welcome. But no magic can turn the jaded 
hacks of politics, or the fops of literature, into men 
fit for this company. The fitness of candidates will 
be tested by the work they can accomplish ; and 
this is a thermometer that takes no account of any 
quantity of blatant commonplace, or of eloquent 
sentiments if they mean nothing, or nothing worth 
meaning. All candidates shall have a fair trial. 
For the successful a great prize is reserved — the 
re-creation and government of Ireland : a prize 
surely among the divinest that man ever aspired 
to win. Many will aim for it. 

" ' Time shows who wz7/ and can.' 

" Although we begin to work in the midst of social 
disorganisation, our main task is not to combat and 
resist, but to found and create. This is a work of 
a tangible, practical kind for all who are ready to 
undertake it. Vague incentives to self-reliance, and 
the miner morals in general, are like sowing chaff — 
no harvest grows from that kind of toil ; but we 
purpose to demand precise and specific results from 
all who are prepared to help us in taking possession 
of our covintry : results that will enrich the country 
and ennoble the workers. The drill, the jacket, and 
the discipline transform an Irish peasant into a sub- 
constable, with as military a carriage and as expert 
an eye and hand as a veteran of the Peninsula. A 
few years in a National school, and the boy who 
emerged out of a smoky and squalid cabin, shared 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 143 

with a pig, is turned into a clean and shapely youth, 
fit to wrestle with the world, and to win the match. 
Look at a railway porter or a railway policeman — 
the decent uniform and the punctual system soon 
make a new man of the peasant. And this physical 
training is a small thing compared with the result of 
discipline on the intellect and practical power of 
cultivated, aspiring men. The one multiplies iron, 
the other multiplies rarest gold of Ophir. A poor- 
house, or a lunatic asylum, is scarcely a sadder 
spectacle to us than the hall of the Four Courts, 
with its multitude of keenest faculties wasting in 
endless barrenness, waiting for work to do, which 
to many will never come, while nobler work ready 
to be done is waiting for them, if they would learn 
to do it. There will be many gloomy, discontented 
hearts in Ireland while idleness is counted a social 
distinction, and until it becomes the point of honour 
to be usefully employed. And this is a gospel 
which we must preach not by words spoken, but 
by work done. 

"When Napoleon turned administrator, he pro- 
claimed as the issue of his task that not one pauper 
should remain in all France ; and that gigantic 
worker was striding towards this result when the 
clash of arms called him away from his nobler war 
against social disorganisation. In the enormous 
lazar-house of Ireland it is not out of the range of 
rational ambition to attain the same goal. If the 
young men of Ireland do their duty we shall see in 
a few years a happy people sit on our soil, and the 



144 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

pauper workhouses become houses of work for free 
prosperous labour. We shall see raised on this solid 
basis that glorious temple in which Tone and Davis, 
O'Brien and Meagher aspired to worship and de- 
voted their lives to consecrate. That new nation 
which shall gather back beneath her wings the 
scattered children of our race, and bid them fulfil 
her promised destiny. We shall see our free, deve- 
loped, purified Ireland at last become what foreign 
genius has predicted, and native genius may accom- 
plish, 'the new and better Carthage of the West.' 

" This is work for barely one generation. In one 
generation the Electorate of Brandenburgh grew 
into the powerful, populous kingdom of Prussia. 
In the lifetime of one man the loose, boundless, 
disjointed tracts of the two Russias condensed into 
a firm and coherent empire. The trampled pro- 
vinces of Spain in the Low Countries — a huge Bog 
of Allen, a gigantic public work — arose and expanded 
into the Empire of the Sea in less time than our 
young men may still hope to live and work. 

" And no generation of men born into the world 
had nobler work to do if they be worthy of their 
destiny. 

"If they prefer sloth and apathy, great results 
are of course impossible. If they prefer bellowing 
inane noise and nonsense, they are more hopelessly 
impossible. But if they will be wise and resolute, 
a great thinker has foretold their victory. ' Even 
the casualties of life,' he says, ' seem to bow to the 
spirit that will not bow to them ; and yield to sub- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 14S 

serve a design which, in their first apparent tendency, 
they threatened to frustrate.' 

" Ireland wants a few workmen of this calibre." 

Among the recruits who answered this appeal, 
several had afterwards remarkable public careers, 
notably a young Munster Catholic who, after forty 
years, is now an official entrusted with the greatest 
industrial enterprise committed to any Irishman in 
our day;^ and a young Munster Protestant, who 
became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 
the House of Commons between the death of Mr. 
Butt and the rise of Mr. Parnell. Out of these 
speculations on the duty of Irishmen came not all 
that was hoped indeed, but at any rate the Tenant 
League of 1850, and the commencement of a 
land war not yet finished, and the estabHshment 
of the first Parliamentary party of independent 
opposition. 

In the succeeding month, Carlyle surprised me 
by a contribution from his own pen. Here is the 
letter which accompanied it : 

" Dear Duffy, — The enclosed blotch of writ- 
ing is tumbling about my blotting books for a 
while past. I ought to durn it at once; but as 
penny stamps have come into the world, prefer that 
you should have the pleasure of burning it. Do 
so, in Heaven's name ; do what else you like, only 

1 Mr. Commissioner MacCarthy, Land Purchase Commission. 

K 



146 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

dofCt (except to your own heart) speak of my mortal 
name in connection with it. The thing wavers so 
between being something and being nothing, that, in 
short, I think you ought to have the burning of it. 
' Fas et ab hoste.'' ' A Friend with a surly severe 
face,' 'From Mr. 'Qraxnbl^s Arboretum Hibernicum,^ 
&c. &c., some such reference, if you print any por- 
tion of it. Do as you like ; only, you are sworn to 
silence deep as death, mind that. 

"Terrible quantity of cry for any symptom of 
wool that yet clearly appears. Nobody speaks 
sense (on the whole nobody there) but yourself. 
So in the Nation too. — Adieu in haste, 

"T. Carlyle. 

"Chelsea, 26/A November. 

" Can you recommend to me a reasonable collec- 
tion of Irish songs? I do not care how vulgar 
they are, how, &c. &c., provided only there be in 
any form a trace of human veracity and insight 
discernable in them. T. C." 



I printed the contribution with the sort of pre- 
liminary note he suggested, and strictly preserved 
his secret ; but he was a man who could not hide 
himself. Mr. Rintoul of the Spectator immediately 
identified the article as Carlyle's, and complained 
that the Nation should talk of a surly face, when, 
in truth, it was a sweet and sympathetic one to 
those who understood it. Since his death the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 147 

article has been referred to in biographies and 
reviews, and printed, in America at any rate. The 
reader will like to see it, and there is no longer 
anything that needs to be concealed : — 

"TREES OF LIBERTY. 

"FROM MR. bramble's UNPUBLISHED 'ARBORETUM 
HIBERNICUM.' 

[This was the preliminary note in the Nation: — "A friend with 
a surly satirical face flings in our way this banter upon ' Irish 
indolence.' Very well, friend ; we shame the devil and print your 
libel. Fas et ab hoste doceri. If there be any seeds of truth in it 
they will grow, when the chaff and wrappage only make manure 
for them."] 

" Many Irishmen talk of dying, &c., for Ireland ; 
and I really believe almost every Irishman now 
alive longs in his way for an opportunity to do 
the dear old country some good. Opportunities 
of at once usefully and conspicuously 'dying' for 
countries are not frequent, and truly the rarer 
they are the better; but the opportunity of use- 
fully if inconspicuously living for one's country, 
this was never denied to any man. Before ' dying ' 
for your country think, my friends, in how many 
quiet strenuous ways you might beneficially live 
for it. 

" Every patriotic Irishman (that is, by hypo- 
thesis, almost every Irishman now alive), who 
would so fain make the dear old country a present 
of his whole life and self, why does he not, for 
example — directly after reading this, and choosing 



148 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

a feasible spot — at least, plant one tree ? That 
were a small act of self-devotion ; small, but 
feasible. Him such tree will never shelter. Hardly 
any mortal but could manage that — hardly any 
mortal, if he were serious in it, but could plant 
and nourish into growth one tree. Eight million 
trees before the present generation run out, that 
were indubitable acquisition for Ireland : for it is 
one of the barest, raggedest countries now known ; 
far too ragged a country, with patches of beautiful 
park and fine cultivation, like shreds of bright 
scarlet on a beggar's clouted coat — a country that 
stands decidedly in need of shelter, shade, and 
ornamental fringing, look at its landscape where 
you will. Once, as the old chroniclers write, 'a. 
squirrel (by bending its course a little, and taking 
a longish leap here and there) could have run 
from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway without 
once touching the ground ; ' but now, eight million 
trees, and I rather conjecture eight times eight 
millions, would be very welcome in that part of 
the empire. On fruit-trees, though these too are 
possible enough, I do not yet insist, but trees — at 
least, trees. 

"That eight million persons will be persuaded 
to plant each his tree, we cannot expect just yet ; 
but do thou, my friend, in silence go and plant 
thine — that thou canst do; one most small duty, 
but a real one, if among the smallest conceivable, 
and a duty which henceforth it will be a sweet 
possession for thee to have lying done. Ireland 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 

for the present is not to be accounted a pleasant 
landscape. Vigorous corn, but thistles and docks 
equally vigorous ; ulcers of reclaimable bog lying 
black, miry, and abominable at intervals of a few- 
miles; no tree shading you, nor fence that avails 
to turn cattle — most fences merely, as it were, 
soliciting the cattle to be so good as not to come 
through — by no means a beautiful country just 
now ! But it tells all men how beautiful it might 
be. Alas, it carries on it, as the surface of this 
earth ever does inefifaceably legible, the physiog- 
nomy of the people that have inhabited it : a people 
of holed breeches, dirty faces, ill-roofed huts — a 
people of impetuosity and of levity — of vehemence, 
impatience, imperfect, fitful industry, imperfect, fitful 
veracity. Oh, Heaven ! there lies the woe of woes, 
which is the root of all. 

" ' Trees of Liberty,' though an Abbe wrote a 
book on them, and incalculable trouble otherwise 
was taken, have not succeeded well in these 
ages. Plant you your eight million trees of shade, 
ornament, fruit : that is a symbol much more likely 
to be prophetic. Each man's tree of industry will 
be, of a surety, his tree of liberty ; and the sum 
of them, never doubt of it, will be Ireland's." 

I probably wrote him, what it would have been 
discourteous to print, that his pleasant little paper 
betrayed a fundamental unacquaintance with Irish 
affairs. It was hopeless to reforest a country 
where, if a tenant planted his seed or sapling, and 



ISO THOMAS CARLYLE, 

tended it until it became a mature tree, the law 
declared it to be the property of the landlord, 
without a scrap of compensation to the man who 
reared it. 

Next month he did the next best thing to en- 
couraging what he thought right, he discouraged 
what he thought wrong, always with a gracious 
frankness characteristic of the man, but impossible 
to the Carlyle whom a heedless public have latterly 
invented for themselves. 

" Chelsea, (^th Decembej; 1 849. 
"Dear Duffy, — Read the enclosed testimony 
(if you have a pair of spectacles at hand), and 
show it to the contributor who denounces Har- 
greaves' appointment to the Encumbered Estates 
Commission as a Ministerial job — thereby instigat- 
ing me and others against Hargreaves and the 
Ministers. The fact is other than your contributor 
supposes ; the fact is not so at all. Let him in 
future know this ; or do you, at any rate, who 
abhor injustice to anybody, keep it in view on 
occasion. My correspondent is a man of the 
strictest veracity and equity, and even of a pedantic 
scrupulosity in regard to exactness. Poor fellow, 
hearing my righteous indignation against Har- 
greaves and Co., he went silently into the matter, 
and two days ago surprised me (and, indeed, 
bored me ; for I had forgotten Hargreaves, and 
cared and care nothing about him) with letters 
from barristers, verbal testimonies, &c. &c., which 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 151 

I cannot for a moment refuse to take as decisive 
evidence that Hargreaves, probably, is a truly able 
man in this business, and that his appointment 
indisputably is not a job, but the best the poor 
men could do for the service of Ireland. ' Copy 
me that testimony,' I said, selecting the first read 
to me, ' and it shall go where right will be done 
upon it.' And so there you have it ; and so I, at 
least, am quit of it, and of my indignation on this 
subject for ever and a day ! 

" We sometimes get the Nation on Saturdaj'' 
night ; but the last two times your man, I think, 
has been too late, for it has failed. Quicken him 
a little ; punctualise him — that might be worth 
while. — Adieu, T. Carlyle." 

"Latter-Day Pamphlets." — Irish Errors. 

At the beginning of 1850 Carlyle commenced to 
issue the famous " Latter-Day Pamphlets." He 
sent me No. i, and my acknowledgment of it 
brought this note : — 



" Chelsea, 13/A February, 1850. 
" Dear Duffy, — As you seem to take an interest 
in the * Latter-Day Pamphlets,' I have directed the 
publisher to send you a copy of No. 2 and the 
others that follow. I also gave him your admoni- 
tion about speed on the Irish side of his affairs. 
The 'edited' is a mere figure of speech, I am 



152 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

afraid. Alone under the stars, with nothing but 
all the dogs of the parish barking for accompani- 
ment : this is once more like to be my history in 
the present ugly feat of walking against time ! I 
should be infinitely gratified, and delivered at once 
from a variety of very ghastly emotions, if any 
true brother out of Adam's general posterity could 
join himself to me, and with a 'Pamphlet' in the 
orthodox vein; but there is nowhere that I know 
of any prospect or probability of such; so we must 
try to do without him, as in former cases. In 
myself I seem to see some dozen or so of Pamphlets, 
which, if I can get fairly uttered (a doubtful point 
in the state of health, state of, &c. &c., I am in), it 
will be an extraordinary relief to my own inner 
man; and the dogs of the parish, and even the 
parish itself, and the universe to boot, shall be right 
welcome to do whatever is i/ieir part in the concert, 
according to their own judgment of that. 

" Pray for me, therefore, and wish me well through 
this adventure ; I mean to speak more plainly than 
is usual upon a good many things. The world, I 
think, had better be durn^ than stand as it at present 
does. God help it and us ! 

" The Nation does not yield me much that I en- 
tirely approve of, except your own articles, which 
run like a rivulet of light and human sense through 
a great continent of very turbid incanite and dim 
materials. Do not let that patriot abuse poor 
Clarendon and his cigars any more ! His lordship 
is not a crapulous man by any means, or in any 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 153 

sense : he learned to smoke in Spain, and is glad 
to solace himself with an innocent whiff in the 
middle of his troubles; really the style of that 
censure is canine, not by any means above the vice- 
regal phantasm of a government, but below it, and 
incapable of mending it. Also, don't rejoice over 
the ' Breaking up of the British Empire ; ' the British 
Empire is nothing like broken up yet, nor like to 
be for a thousand years to come, I may prophesy. 
Nor is it i^/Vhonourable to you to be an English- 
man, but honourable, if you had even been born a 

Roman or Spartan, withal. Believe me Alas, 

I find this is only a /lalf sheet ; so must say adieu. 
— Yours always truly, T. Carlyle. 

"You talked of coming over 'about New Year's 
Day,' but have not come." 



In one of the "Latter-Day Pamphlets" — the one 
named " Downing Street " — Carlyle, after pouring 
a torrent of contempt and obloquy on Parliament, 
whose only function in these times was to select 
some insignificant individual to be First Minister 
for a little space, suggested that the thing might be 
done better and decidedly cheaper by transferring 
the authority to the Times newspaper. It must 
have tickled the philosopher's midriff to find this 
mad banter taken seriously by one of his admirers, 
who was willing to subscribe £\o a year towards 
setting up a newspaper which should supersede 



154 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Parliament in the minds of all reasonable people. 
This was the subject of Carlyle's next letter. 



A Paper to Supersede Parliament. The 
First Tenant-Right Movement. 

"Chelsea, 2'jthjtily, 1850. 

"Dear Duffy, — The enclosed note — otherwise 
a model in its way — brings me in mind of poor old 
Ireland, and of this time twelvemonth on the street 
of Stranorlar, where I saw you last. Take the note, 
therefore, and a transient sincere blessing from 
me along with it. Look at 'p. 17' (of 'Downing 
Street'), however, if you chance to have it within 
reach, and then let us hft up both our hands, and 
bless the anonymous Coleraine friend. 

" These ' Pamphlets ' are now out of my hands, 
thank God. The last of them is waiting for August 
in the printer's or publisher's hands, and that ugly 
piece of work, like some others, has been got into 
the rear. Such a universal howl of astonishment, 
indignation, and condemnation seldom rose around 
a poor man before. Voice of the ' universal dog- 
kennel ' — Whap thap ! Bow-wow ! No human 
response hitherto, or hardly any, but that also will 
come so far as needful, I have no doubt. Thank 
your Nation critic, however; the news of such 
insight on his part was really welcome. 

■ " My poor liver is gone almost to destruction with 
all this and with the summer heats, and other fell 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 155 

ei ceteras ; I seldom in my life felt more entirely 
worn down, and am now straight for the country — 
Glamorganshire (S. Wales), most likely, there to 
lie perfectly silent for some three weeks, and after 
that, Scotland, &c. &c., perhaps, for a good long 
while. 

" Your ' Tenant Agitation ' looms out very big on 
me, and I must say it wears a more business-like 
aspect than any of the previous 'agitations,' and, I 
could fancy, may give work to all the * authorities ' 
(on your side of the water and ours) for a generation 
or two to come ! Yes, that is the heart of the 
matter, and a terrific universe of ' work ' lies the7'e 
before we get to a solution of it ! Cosa fatta ha 
capo — to end one must begin. That is true, too. 
Suaviter in modo then, and God be with you. — 
Yours ever truly, T. Carlyle." 



The following is the passage from " Downing 
Street " referred to : — 

" The notion that any Government is or can be a 
No-government, without the deadliest peril to all 
noble interests of the Commonwealth, and by degrees, 
slower or swifter, to all ignoble ones also, and to 
the very gully drainer and thief lodging-houses and 
Mosaic sweating establishments, and at last without 
destruction to such No-government itself — was 
never my notion, and I hope it will soon cease 
altogether to be the world's or to be anybody's. 



156 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

But if it be the correct notion, as the world seems 
at present to flatter itself, I point out improvements 
and abbreviations. Dismiss your National Palaver ; 
make the Times newspaper your national palaver, 
which needs no beer-barrels or hustings, and is 
cheaper in expense of money and of falsity a thou- 
sand and a million-fold. Have an economical red- 
tape drilling establishment (it were easier to devise 
such a thing than a right modern University), and 
fling out your orange-skin among the graduates, 
when you want a new Premier." 

And here is the letter from the Coleraine corre- 
spondent : — 

" Coleraine, /z(t/y 2isi. 
" Dear Sir, — You mention an admirable project 
in p. ly of your ' Downing Street.' But why should 
not something be done as well as said ? There is 
small chance for such a project if it be put before 
the said ' Palavering Parliament.' Why not do 
something yourself? Say you start a paper at the 
beginning of next session ; you write a leading 
article now and then, to explain the pros and co7ts 
of certain questions before the House, to explain 
the nature of the difficulties which it is necessary 
to meet, and to give statistics when necessary, and 
let the rest of the paper be open to any M.P., in 
the way you propose. If your objection to this 
ht of a pecuniary nature, I for one would readily 
subscribe £io a. year until there are sufficient funds 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 157 

to carry it on, and surely I should not be the only 
one who would give as much. You find fault with 
others who talk and do not act, and therefore I 
suppose you yourself ever ready to act in earnest ! 
Pray forgive me also if it be very impudent of me 
to address you thus. I sincerely wish you well, 
and am anxious for the good of my country, and 
would do all I could to benefit any fellow-creature, 
and care not to have my name known. Let me 
repeat that, if I hear that any such plan will be 
adopted, I shall not be remiss in subscribing from 
my own funds, and in persuading those real M.P.'s 
with whom I am acquainted, to write instead of 
speaking, and in inducing the mere effigy M.P.'s 
to assist you with their subscriptions. — Yours 
sincerely." 



In the year 1850 I was deeply engaged in a task, 
which had Carlyle's warm sympathy, the organisa- 
tion of a Tenant League to secure fair rents and 
permanent tenure for Irish farmers. During our 
journey in the previous autumn I had obtained the 
assent of many provincial gentlemen to the scheme, 
which was launched as soon as the public mind had 
been prepared for it by the press. Carlyle watched 
its progress with constant interest from the date 
when it was first foreshadowed in the Nation till 
a career of practical action commenced. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



The Irish Problem. 



" SCOTSBRIG, ECCLEFECHAN, N.B,, 
Sepl 15, 1850. 

" Dear Duffy, — I am very glad to have a word 
from you again. I ran into South Wales, directly 
after writing to you, and then lay in the utmost 
attainable inaction for three weeks ; after which, 
nearly other three weeks ago, I came over hither 
to my Scottish birthland, when your letter soon 
found me — where I have been ever since, en- 
deavouring with all my might to keep free of every 
botheration (a difficult problem in this world !) and 
to continue doing absolutely nothing. I do not 
even speak, unless it cannot be helped. Amid 
these old scenes of infancy, which have grown so 
supernatural to me, peopled with mere gliosis and 
inarticulate memories, I find silent occupation 
enough ! One is much called to sink silent, at 
intervals, in this Babel of a world, and let the 
turbid elements settle into sediment a little. Could 
I abolish grouse-shooting, and doom all the ivasted 
classes to sit as I am now doing, for a month each 
year, what immeasurable quantities of manure 
should I precipitate out of every mind, and out of 
the poor world's business, by that act alone ! 

"The Nation comes to me, round by London, on 
Tuesdays ; everything Irish has got a new im- 
pressiveness since I saw the poor old land with 
ray eyes. Depend upon it, I have by no means 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 

forgotten poor old Ireland, nor the people that dwell 
there. A strange, ragged, still beauty is in my 
memory of Ireland ; a country bare and waste, and 
poor, but noble nevertheless ; poor souls, how kind 
and patient all the people too were with me and 
* never minded ' my sulky humours ! From no 
human soul in Ireland that I can bethink me of 
did I get one uncivil word or look. 'A kind of 
nobleman thrown into the poor-house (by whisky 
and other sins and misfortunes),' really this is in 
some sort the definition of poor Ireland ; shall get 
out of the poor-house and cast away the sins and 
whiskies yet, if it please Heaven ! I have told 
certain proud Yankees on occasion, ' Well, you 
have many dollars, immensities of bacon, molasses, 
and such like; but there never yet was a soul of 
you that could bring a Coolun ^ out of it, much 
less teach Europe Christianity in old days ; be 
patient v/ith poor old Ireland, 1 tell you ! ' Ireland, 
it is to be hoped, will learn wisdom by experience 
at last ; learn to know a lie from the truth a little 
when it hears it, and no more expend its breath 
and hope upon 'Mullaghmast Caps,' and the like 
Domdaniel-ware (authentic produce of the devil, 
however fine it looks) ; Ireland will cease to be a 
lie to itself, and gradually become a truth ; every 
Irishman that does not lie to himself is helping 
her towards that ! 

" You never did a wiser thing than that of exclud- 

^ A peculiarly sweet, pathetic Irish air is the "Coolun." 



i6o THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ing stump-oratory from the Tenant League ; I duly 
noticed that fact, with good hope at the time. And 
on the whole, I continue to say your present ' agita- 
tion ' looks more like doing work than any I have 
ever seen in Ireland. But the work, alas, is immense, 
and God only knows when or how it will be got 
done. ' Rent by a valuation ' is not intrinsically 
so unfeasible — nay, so unusual — witness the old 
usury laws only abolished in these years; but it 
is utterly at variance with all the free-trade, laissez- 
faire and other strongest tendencies of this poor 
time; and though said tendencies appear to me 
mostly mean and wooden, and nine-tenths untrue, 
yet it is precisely the true tenth that rules at 
present. In fact, to succeed altogether, you must 
have a new era, no less ! Nay, I cannot but per- 
ceive that 'fixity of tenure,' with such a set of 
tenants as you now have in Ireland, would never 
do, though you even could get it — that in fact, 
independently of all obstacles on the landlord's, 
parliament's, and official sides of the question, there 
is a total unpreparedness on the part of the popula- 
tion: 'more ado than a dish to wash,' as the pro- 
verb says before you attain this same new era of 
justice on the land question ! Nevertheless, I must 
say always, pause not, use all your courage, all 
your wisdom, in continually advancing ! You will 
do good in every way, if you advance wisely ; every 
step you secure is a laying bare of new intolerable 
'abuses; a bringing of the Grand Problem (in all 
its figures, moral, political, social, not agricultural 



THOMAS CARLYLE. i6i 

alone, and not Irish alone), nearer to the thoughts 
of the practical necessities of ail men, and thus 
nearer to its only possibility of solution. Like 
other such problems, it will be solved by slow- 
degrees (I suppose), so soon as all men feel that 
they cannot live without solving it — not much 
sooner, I doubt. 

" One thing, it strikes me, will become in the 
course of your struggle much more apparent than 
it now is : The necessity of that * regimenting of 
paupers ' in which I see clearly, and nowhere else at 
all, the beginning of new government, and the neces- 
sary advancement towards that, for the afflicted 
world in this epoch. Suppose every Irish 'free' 
tiller of the earth, so soon as he declared himself 
a 'free' beggar in need of Indian meal from his 
poor brothers, fell at once into the hands of an 
agricultural Sir Duncan Macgregor, and became 
a ' well-commanded ' tiller of the soil, doing his feat 
as your green police do theirs ; and not only 
relieving all men from the burden of him, but 
gallantly exterminating bogs, and approving him- 
self a blessing to the earth and to all men. I leave 
you to compute a little what boundless rehef to 
all interest whatsoever would lie there; free space 
granted to laissez-faire, and all extant principles 
of proceeding to try themselves against the fact, 
and run their very utmost without shackles on their 
feet. If they proved equal to the problem of the 
nineteenth century, well and good ; if (as I see to 
be inevitable) they proved unequal, at least they 



i62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

(what was good in them) would be able to last 
longer, and to see their successors ready before 
departing hence. These things, I fancy, will 
gradually come athwart you there and so many 
others of the like genus, either in this or some 
other form of the ' Tenant Agitation ; ' and whatso- 
ever real work you do in that is done for behalf 
of these also, which lie so far away from the general 
thoughts at present, but will become, if I mistake 
not, very familiar to it by-and-by ! 

" Lucas, I do believe, is capital in his present 
place. Give him my compliments and true good 
wishes for that and all other real service to Ireland 
that may lie in him. When he took to Catholicism 
first (which seemed to me so distracted an opera- 
tion), and I heard what he had to say about Irish 
tenants and landlords, I could not help recognising 
the finger of Heaven in his change of religion. 

" No Irish ' list of good members,' nor indeed of 
English, has fallen in my way. They are a dread- 
fully scarce commodity, I imagine. Nevertheless 
you must seek for them, as for the vital air of 
your undertaking. The more honestly you seek, 
the better is your chance both of finding what is, 
and of calling forth a set far worthier to be found, 
in time coming. And so, good speed to you, in 
this and in all other honourable courses ; and adieu 
for the present. With kind remembrances to Mrs. 
Duffy and Mrs. Callan. — Yours ever truly, 

''T. Carlyle." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 163 

This was the era of Cardinal Wiseman's arrival 
in England and the clamour about Papal aggres- 
sion. I confidently counted on seeing Carlyle 
vehement against the insensate outcry of ignorance 
and bigotry, but the old Covenanter, who lay 
beneath all his latter-day philosophy, awoke. We 
in Ireland were warned to take no offence, and 
were not, he conceived, in the least manner aimed 
at in the business, but when Parliament met we got 
a full share of the tempest. 

" Chelsea, December 2, 1850. 

"Dear Duffy, — Will you send me the exact 
name and address of Shine Lalor — is he not John, 
or something else beside Shine ? As to the address, 
I suppose Killarney itself will do, if he is still re- 
sident in his castle thereabouts. Item : the Chris- 
tian name of Dr. Cane, Kilkenny. I am to send 
(as you perhaps guessj a certain volume to each 
of the gentlemen, by way of testifying, in a most 
imperfect manner, what a remembrance I have of 
them. Ay de mi ! 

" You seem to make rapid way with your Tenant 
Association ; indeed, I see clearly that is the direct 
road into the centre of the abyss ; facilis descensus 
Averni, if you will take the metaphor in good part, 
for surely if the world's cloaca have any bottom, I 
do clearly perceive it lies there. 

" Our poor old friend the Pope has committed 
a sad blunder in sending his pasteboard cardinals 
with their Bull thunder over to us just now ! AH 



1 64 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

men think it an impertinence and futile infatuation 
on the part of the old gentleman ; and among the 
general mass of the English people there is such 
an uproar as I have not seen for twenty years past, 
of which I cannot say, for my own part, that I alto- 
gether disapprove. The Pope may depend upon 
it, we will by no means come back to him ; never 
through all eternity, to him ! We may find worse 
fellows, too (nay, I expect far worse). For the 
rest, I warn you in any case to take no offence 
against us, you in Ireland, for we do not in the least 
mean you ! That is truth, and I am very glad to 
see the Nation teaching that, and hope you will all 
along keep it well in mind. 

" The Nation, in point of real talent (bating per- 
haps a little worldly wisdom, and savoir /aire, which 
is not quite its forte), seems to me the cleverest 
weekly paper I read. Really on Saturday nights 
there is none of them that (spite of the exotic colour) 
has so much the ring of the real metal in it. Go 
on and prosper ! I have had some difficulty to 
defend you, to myself and others, for voting against 
the * Godless colleges.' Beware of that ; look on 
both sides of that ! What if this that poor, dark, 
angry menials now call ' Godless colleges ' were 
actually the beginning of the real religion of the 
future for Ireland, and for us all destined to live, 
and rise ever higher heavenward (I grant on occa- 
sion) ; but we are travelling, these three centuries 
now, quite in the opposite direction, and have not, 
I think (for all our bleeding feet and bad weather), 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 165 

the smallest vestige of a notion to turn back ! In 
brief, it will not surprise me at all if, when the 
Parliament meets, a law (after infinite j argon, 1 is 
passed to send Wiseman & Co. about their business 
again, and prohibit any British subject henceforth 
from importing ware of that kind into this country. 
The beautiful ' principles of toleration ' — in v/hich 
I myself do not believe a jot — will receive some 
illustration in this business ; and to me, sure enough 
(if I could have patience with the vile temporary 
dust), this beating of humbug against humbug is the 
destruction of nonsense to such and such extent, and 
ought to be regarded as a gain. Heaven love you 
always, dear Duffy. I meant only to write a word, 
and you see ! — Yours always, T. Carlyle." 

The reference to the " Godless colleges " had this 
meaning. When the scheme of the Queen's Colleges 
in Ireland was proposed by Sir Robert Peel, the 
Catholic bishops were divided upon the question of 
accepting or rejecting them. A majority of the 
bishops were prepared to accept and support them 
on condition that certain not unreasonable amend- 
ments were made for the better protection of the 
faith and morals of students. The amendments were 
refused, and a Synod of the Catholic "Church of 
Ireland declared that the institutions as they stood 
were dangerous to faith and morals. Under these 
circumstances, I advised that Catholic pupils should 
not be sent to these colleges till the necessary 
reforms were conceded. 



i66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 



John Stuart Mill. 

In 1 85 1 the Council of the Tenant League deter- 
mined to invite John Mill to represent an Irish 
county, that he might advocate in Parliament the 
principles of land tenure taught in his Political 
Economy. Mr. Lucas and I were authorised to 
communicate with him on the subject. Lucas was 
not able to go to London at the time, and as it was 
ne)ressary I should see Mr. Mill at once, I asked 
Mr. Carlyle to introduce me. He complied promptly. 
He could do this much without scruple, he said, but 
I must understand that Mill and he had ceased to 
see much of each other in later times, as, in fact, 
they had nothing at all in common. Mill had one 
faculty in great perfection, he possessed t^e power 
of setting forth his opinions with a lucidity which 
no one in England could match. What he aimed 
to make you see you saw as plainly as a con- 
spicuous object set in the sunshine. But he had 
^ the habit of approachmg everything by the way of 
logical^analysis, and when he brought that method 
to bear upon a question he got out of it nearly all 
it could yield him. There were probably quite other 
qualities in it, not at all to be detected by logical 
analysis, and altogether unsuspected by him. Of 
the true relations of things in the universe. Mill had 
small insight or^none. He was inclined to scream 
arid shriek about matters of no real importance, and 
to believe in unrealities of various sorts. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 167 

After pausing a little for anything I might have 
to say, he proceeded : At one time we saw a good 
deal of Mill. In the Reform Bill era he was an 
innocent young creature, with rich auburn hair and 
gentle pathetic expression, beautiful to contemplate; 
but a domestic embroilment drove him to adopt a 
secluded monastic sort of life, in which people saw 
little of him but the work he did. His life had 
been wrecked by a Platonic, and qtiite innocent, 
affection for a married lady, who had since become 
his wife, concerning whom he had got possessed 
by an idea, or, indeed, a series of ideas, which were 
altogether absurd and insupportable. He regarded 
her as the paragon of womankind, which she was 
not by long odds ; far otherwise than a paragon, 
one might safely say. She was the daughter of 
a Radical doctor, who married her to Taylor, a 
Radical and Socinian, an honest, simple sort of 
man, who had no doubt that the ideas which pre- 
vailed among this class of persons afforded a suffi- 
cient solution for all the hard problems of life. 
W. J. Fox, who had a chapel in Finsbury^ where 
he patronised Peter and Paul as ignorant but well- 
intentioned persons, and delivered prayers which 
some one described as the most eloquent prayers 
that ever were addressed to {inimicking and laugh- 
ing) a British audience ! Fox had probably the 
Taylors among his congregation; at any rate, he 
came to know that Mrs. Taylor, a vivacious little 
body, found her life among the Socinians weari- 
some, and he told her that John Mill was the 



i68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

man among the human race to relieve in a com- 
petent manner her dubieties and difficulties. He 
brought Mill to see her ; and Mill, who had pro- 
bably never before looked into a woman's face, was 
spell-bound. She was a shrewd woman, with a 
taste for coquetry, and she took possession of Mill 
and wrapped him up like a cocoon. He used to go 
to her in all his trouble to be comforted, and in all 
his difficulties to be guided, and probably to be 
flattered a little besides. 

From that time all Mill's enjoyments in life 
centred in her. Taylor remonstrated with her on 
the extent to which the intimacy was carried ; but 
she told him he might blow up the house if it 
seemed good to him, but she could not, under any 
circumstances, give up this friendship, as she would 
probably call it. There were children to be con- 
sidered, and he thought he had better endure the 
thing than make a clamour and a catastrophe. . . , 
The elder Mill, John's father, James Mill, was a 
skilful and experienced man ; while he was editor 
of a newspaper in London he wrote a history of 
British India, remarkable for its curious acquaint- 
ance with the laws and customs of the natives. It 
was a book still worth reading. John, when he 
began writing, used to produce long-sounding 
essays on human affairs, very clear in style and 
expression, and with bits of knowledge too, even 
considerable bits at times, but, on the whole, not 
meaning much. Old Sterling, the thunderer, used 
to say there was a good deal of sawdust in them. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 169 

Mrs. Carlyle, who was present, said Mrs. Mill 
was not the pink of womankind as her husband 
conceived, but a peculiarly affected and empty body. 
She was not easy unless she startled you with 
unexpected sayings. If she was going to utter 
something kind and affectionate, she spoke in a 
hard, stern voice. If she wanted to bq alarming or 
uncivil, she employed the most honeyed and affec- 
tionate tones. " Come down and see us," she said 
one day {inimicking her tone), " you will be 
charmed with our house, it is so full of rats." 
'' Rats ! " cried Carlyle. " Do you regard thefn as 
an attraction ? " "' Yes " {piano), " they are such 
dear, innocent creatures." 

Mrs. Carlyle at the same time told me the story 
now sufficiently known of how the first volume of 
the "French Revolution" got burnt. When Mill 
suddenly appeared at Cheyne Row to announce 
the misfortune, he looked so like the ghost of 
Hamlet's father, that she knew some catastrophe 
must have occurred, and exclaimed involuntarily, 
"Gracious Providence, he has gone off with Mrs. 
Taylor ! " but happily the misfortune proved to 
be a more remediable one.^ 

^ Carlyle, in a letter to Emerson, written shortly after the occur- 
rence, gives an account of this misfortune. The reader is invited 
to note how placidly a great trouble is borne by a man who was 
impatient of little ones, and that he does not even name the "kind 
but careless friend " who had brought the disaster on him. 

" Since I wrote last to you, there has a great mischance befallen 
me : the saddest, I think, of the kind called Accidents I ever had 
to front. By dint of continual endeavour for many weary weeks, I 



I70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Carlyle went on to say that when he came down 
to London, his intimacy with Mill was for a con- 
siderable time close and regular. The Sabbath 
bells were not more certain than Mill's friendly visit 
to Cheyne Row. He could not account for this 
intimacy suddenly ending ; neither had altered in 
fundamentals, nor were they further from agreeing 
than they had always been. 

I suggested that if Mill had heard his estimate of 
Mrs. Taylor, there need be no difficulty in account- 
ing for the change. 

had got the first volume of that miserable ' French Revolution ' 
rather handsomely finished ; from amid infinite contradictions I felt 
as if my head were fairly above water, and I could go on writing 
my poor book, defying the devil and the world, with a certain 
degree of assurance, and even of joy. A friend borrowed this 
volume of manuscript, — a kind friend, but a careless one, — to write 
notes on it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening, about 
two months ago, he came in on us, ' distraction (literally) in his 
aspect ; ' the manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up as 
waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone ! I 
could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have 
shot himself; we had to gather ourselves together, and show a 
smooth front to it, which happily, though difficult, was not impos- 
sible to do. I began again, at the beginning, to such a wretched 
paralysing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to do, at 
which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of saffron, 
to the humour of incipient desperation ; and now, four days ago, 
perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an element that 
grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum (think of that !), I, 
with a new effort of self-denial, sealed up all the paper fragments, 
and said to myself : ' In this mood thou makest no way, writest 
nothing that requires not to be erased again ; lay it by for one com- 
plete week ! ' And so it lies, under lock and key. I have digested 
the whole misery ; I say, if thou canst never write this thing, why 
then never do write it : God's universe will go along better with- 
out it." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 171 

Mr. Carlyle and I called on Mr. Mill, who states 
in his autobiography the decision he came to on the 
proposal from Ireland.^ I knew Mr. Mill from that 
time till his death, and regarded him as one of the 
most just, upright, and valiant of men. 

The Encumbered Estates Act threw a great deal 
of the land of Ireland into the market at this time 
at prices unexpectedly low ; I thought a national 
effort ought to be made to enable the occupying 
tenants to purchase these estates, and I framed a 
plan of a Small Proprietors' Society for this purpose, 
which had the good fortune to secure the sympathy 
and approval of Cobden, Bright, and Mill, and some 
of the best men in Ireland. It is to the prospectus 
of this society Carlyle's next letter refers. 

" Chelsea, Avril 26, 185 1. 
" Dear Duffy, — I think your prospectus per- 
fect ; it has colour enough left ; all you have taken 
out of it is the angry controversial smoke, whatever 

1 "In this summary of my untoward life, I have now arrived at 
the period at which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of 
books was to be exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a 
member of the House of Commons. The proposal made to me 
early in 1865 by some electors in Westminster, did not present the 
idea to me for the first time. It was not even the first offer I had 
received, for, more than ten years previous, in consequence of my 
opinions on the Irish Land Question, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Duffy, in 
the name of the popular party in Ireland, offered to bring me into 
Parliament for an Irish county, which they could easily have done ; 
but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament with the office I 
then held in the India House, precluded even consideration of the 
proposal." — Autobiography of [ohn Stuart MilL 



172 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

could obstruct the clearness, which is here perfect, 
that of an object seen by sunlight under the general 
azure of the sky. Few things can seem more 
creditable ; certainly nothing at all in any best Irish 
programme we have lately seen. In reading, I 
almost feel a kind of desire to invest money in the 
scheme myself — if I had any money worth in- 
vesting ! 

"At page 22 you speak of draining and improving 
(to the extent of main drains and roads) the estates 
you purchase, which, undoubtedly, is very proper 
so far, before allotting them : but you will have to 
specify the limits of that a little more, I suppose. 
The statement at this point of the prospectus startled 
my attention as a new circumstance ; perhaps some 
warning of it could be introduced about page lO 
with advantage ? Indeed, I do not quite know 
about those * quarter shares,' whether to vote for 
them or not; nor, in fact^ about any detail of the 
plan is my vote good for much. I used to believe 
immensely in small farms ; and certainly the best 
people of the labouring class I have ever seen lived 
in that manner; but there goes much more than a 
small farm to such a result; and failures enough 
(in an ever-increasing proportion) have become mani- 
fest to me withal. Brief ^ he who is a free man ' 
will do rather well in small culture, which is his true 
position if he is poor ; well in small culture or in 
big ; but he who is ' not free,' again, whom nature 
has made a fool and a slave (i.e., too foolish and too 
slavish for his difficult position), he will never do 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 173 

well, unless, perhaps, if well ordered and compelled ; 
and it is a pity to put any portion of our poor old 
Mother's surface under the control of such a one, 
if we could help it. Democracy, here as elsewhere, 
I clearly see, is not possible; but, on the other 
hand, your * aristocracy ' — Good Heavens ! So you 
must even do your best according to the day 
and hour. Surely, by this method, you may hope 
to push out the finest of your Irish peasantry, these 
likeliest to be able to live as ' free men ' imder our 
terrible pressures ; and for every one of these you 
can retain within the four seas gods and men will 
be obliged to you ! The others they had better go 
to America, or even to final chaos, than live as 
they have long been doing : I deliberately say so. 
But they are not, I believe, going either of these 
roads just yet ; they are pouring over into Scotland 
and England (Watt's steam engine is worth a 
million of O'Connells and stump-orator ' Libera- 
tors ! ' ), and are fast making us all into one 
uniform mess of pottage, which I cannot but admit 
is fair to the Three Kingdoms and her sacred 
Majesty and Co. ! Oh, Heaven ! one tries to laugh 
at the things (in this poor epoch), and they are 
terrible and sacred as the baring of the Lord's 
right hand upon Iniquity and Quackery and Doggery 
too long continued. 

" Did yovi ever read a small octavo volume, 
almost 150 years old (London, 1703, I think), called 
* Fletcher of Saltoun's Works ' ? I recommend it 
to you for a couple of evenings. A proud Scotch 



174 ■ THOMAS CARLYLE. 

gentleman, a noble Scotchman, he will show you 
an advocacy of ' Repeal ' conducted not a la stump- 
orator, and yet not destined or deserving to succeed 
at all on those terms, also a Scotland not so unlike 
your present Ireland ; on the whole a variety of 
rather curious things, and the soul of a right 
gallant man for one, and will repay perusal well, I 
promise you. 

" Your lady-critic is getting very wild upon Leigh 
Hunt, woman, &c. &c. Beautiful alcoholic steam 
too ; but it requires to be resolutely cooled, rectified, 
and condensed, if we are ever to swallow it with 
satisfaction. — Adieu, yours ever truly, 

"T. Carlyle." 

I may mention that this scheme came to nothing, 
because it had the misfortune to include among 
its directors John Sadlier, M.P., who made his 
final exit from the world on Hampstead Heath, 
in circumstances familiar to the reader. He was 
chairman of a bank in England, and of another 
in Ireland, and an attorney dealing with real pro- 
perty on a prodigious scale, and was supposed to 
be a buttress to the society. When we were 
about to commence operations, however, he wished 
to transfer our account to the two banks with which 
he was connected, from the Bank of Ireland an- 
nounced in the prospectus, and to sell to the society 
half-a-dozen estates which he had on hand, rem- 
nants, I fancied, of purchases which had not proved 
successful. As projector of the society, answer- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 175 

able to the country for its character and probity, 
I positively refused my consent. The majority of 
the directors, however, were disposed to support 
the man with great reputation for practical ability, 
and who carried the proxies of several capitalists 
ready to support our scheme. Thereupon I pub- 
licly retired, specifying the need which had arisen 
for doing so, and the society gradually dwindled 
away and came to nothing. 

Among the friends whom I introduced to Carlyle 
during the Irish visit was Dr. Murray, Senior Pro- 
fessor of Theology in Maynooth College. He was 
a man of vigorous intellect and many accomplish- 
ments, peculiarly familiar with the English clas- 
sics, and master of a style which has been rarely 
excelled for poignancy and lucidity. He wished to 
become an Edinburgh Reviewer. I asked Carlyle 
to aid him, which he did promptly and cordially. 
Here is his letter on the subject : — 

"Chelsea, yc!:;?2^(2:r7 30, 1852. 
"Dear Duffy, — I will cheerfully do all I can 
for Dr. Murray ; and indeed have already as good 
as done so, of which I hope to communicate to 
you the issue in a day or two. I have described 
Dr. Murray and his project to the editor in question 
this morning, and put the question to him : Will 
you deliberately read his paper if he send one ? 
By this means, taking part of the risk upon my- 
self, I think the problem may perhaps be a little 
abridged, and the risk of the other parties less. 



176 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

You shall hear at once what answer there is ; 
till then, keep silence, please. My conviction is 
that any deliberate essay of Dr. Murray's would 
decidedly deserve the trouble of reading by an 
editor; and doubtless I could so have managed it 
in general, and perhaps with this entangled blue 
and yellow in particular ; but, as I said, it will be 
surer, and may probably be briefer, to proceed 
as now. 

" Can you send me, one of these days, Dr. 
Kennedy's address — the doctor of whom I saw so 
much in Dublin, who is Pitt Kennedy's brother, 
and who lives somewhere in the southern outskirts, 
I think — a well-known man ? No haste about it, 
only don't quite forget. 

" I am truly sorry to hear that your land scheme 
has come to ruin in so provoking and paltry a 
way. There can notJiing be done, then, for the 
poor Irish people at present ! Nothing by express 
enactment or arrangement ; but they must follow 
the dumb law of their positions, and sink, sink, 
till they do come upon rock ! I rather judge so ; 
nothing considerable, either for them or for any 
people or object whatsoever ; all objects having 
got so frightfully enigmatic (hideous and unin- 
ielligible, as the old official masks drop off them), 
and our chief interpreter of enigmatic realities being 
Lord John at this moment — an interpreter that 
,probably defies the world for his fellow, if we 
consider where he is and when he is ! Well, 
there is no help ; we must all get down to the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 177 

rocks ; we are in a place equivalent to Hell (for 
every true soul and interest) till we do get thither; 
there, and there only, on the eternal basis, can 
there be any ' heaven ' and land of promise for the 
sons of Adam (sons of Hudson, millionaire and 
penniless alike, I exclude). Thither must we, as 
God live — and God knows many of us will have 
a good bit to go before we arrive there, and will 
need considerable thrashing and tossing before the 
chaff be well beaten off us, I guess. It is the 
dismallest epoch, and yet one of the grandest — 
like a putrid Golgotha with immortality beyond it ; 
I do verily believe (in figurative language) com- 
parable to * resurrection from the dead.' It is in 
such way I look at it, in silence generally, and 
welcome even a Brummagem Cromwell of the 
French as a clear step forward. Five-and-thirty 
years of Parliamentary stump oratory, all ending in 
less than nothing ; now let us try drill-sergeantry 
a little even under these sad terms ! I find the 
talk of France to be, and to have been, much 
madder than even their silence is like to be. God 
is great. 

" You are dreadfully unjust to what you call 
' England ' in almost all you say about Ireland, 
and in general your interpretation of the former 
hated entity is altogether mistaken, too often (I 
swear to you) at once lamentable and absurd ! I 
forgive it, as before, but pray always it might 
alter. There seems to me no possibility of profit 
in that direction. I had a letter from a brother 

M 



178 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of Mitchel the other day, who dates Washington, 
an inquiring, strugghng, ingenuous, and ambitious 
kind of nature, to whom, for John's sake, I made 
some reply. Adieu, I hope only for a few days. — 
Yours always, T. Carlyle." 



Dr. Murray contributed to the Edinburgh Review 
for a brief period, during the editorship of Mr. 
Empson. When Cornewall Lewis succeeded him in 
the editorial chair, he made objection to something in 
an article submitted to him, and Dr. Murray seized 
the occasion to retire altogether. In a note on the 
subject to me, he said — 

" A strong religious scruple got into my head 
about being connected with the Edinburgh Review. 
Though professedly a literary and political journal, 
yet, of late years especially, it had become rather 
theological — the theology being, of course, of a very 
bad stamp. It occurred to me that there was an 
impropriety in my contributing to such a periodical. 
I reasoned myself out of this — still I felt very un- 
comfortable, though keeping my uneasiness all to 
myself. There were four articles out of nine in 
the January number, and two in the last number, 
more or less of this character. Lewis's note took a 
heavy weight off my mind." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 179 



Disraeli. 



At the General Election of 1852, I came into 
Parliament, beating the Chief Secretary, who had 
been most active in prosecuting me and my friends 
in '48, and attended a winter session towards the 
close of that year. I visited Cheyne Row when- 
ever it was practicable, and on Sunday afternoon 
had generally a walk with Carlyle in some of the 
parks. When he was not disposed to walk he 
had chairs brought to the grass plot behind his 
house, and tranquilly smoked a long clay pipe, with 
a friend or two sitting or standing beside him, to 
whom he talked at intervals. Later, when the 
Derby Government fell, we spoke of the event. I 
said, though I had voted against them, I could not 
help having a certain sympathy with Disraeli for 
the indomitable pluck with which he faced his 
enemies at the head of a party which distrusted 
him only a little less than the honourable gentle- 
men opposite. The Peelites seemed to hate him 
with a preternatural animosity, but I had never 
heard that he had done anything cruel or cowardly 
against them or any one else. He was a political 
gladiator, no doubt, as Bolingbroke and Canning 
had been before him, but it was idle to complain 
that he struck deft blows at his opponents; that 
was his vocation. 

A base vocation, Carlyle exclaimed. The case 
was not a perplexing one at all, it seemed to him. 



i8o THOMAS CARLYLE. 

A cunning Jew got a parcel of people to believe in 
him, though no man of the smallest penetration 
could have any doubt that he was an impostor, 
with no sort of purpose in all he was doing but to 
serve his own interests. He was a man from whom 
no good need be expected, a typical Jew, ostentatious, 
intrinsically servile, but stiffnecked in his designs. 

/tis diabolo dehtr, I interposed. Let it be re- 
membered that he exhibited a generous courage 
on behalf of his race, in face of the fierce hostility 
of the party which he led. He was true, at any 
rate, to the interest and honour of his own people, 
which counterbalanced a multitude of sins; and 
I had a personal satisfaction in seeing a race, who 
were persecuted for a crime committed centuries 
and centuries before they were born, reassert 
themselves. 

They were, he said, paying for sins of their own, 
as well as of their ancestors. They were an im- 
potent race, who had never distinguished them- 
selves in their entire history by any estimable 
quality. Some of them clambered to what they 
called prosperity, but, arrayed in the showiest gar- 
niture, there was always an odour of old clo' about 
them. They made great quantities of money up 
and down, and glorified the speculator who made 
most as the most venerable of mortals. When of 
old any man appeared among them who had some- 
. thing to tell worth their attention, one knew how 
such a one was received by the Israelites, and 
their vices of character were intractable. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. i8i 

In London I saw Carlyle under a new aspect. 
Among friends he was still simple and genial ; but 
he was much run after by inquisitive Americans, 
who got brief glimpses of him from time to time, 
and as they wanted for the most part to interview 
him, he got into the habit of uttering, almost as 
soon as his visitors had settled down, the sort of 
harangue on some great topic which they expected 
from him. At times his friends had to listen to 
long discourses, which were only an expansion of 
opinions they had become familiar with in conver- 
sation. When he delivered himself of one of these 
set speeches his conversational manner disappeared, 
and his language came forth like a douche-bath, in 
a strong, unbroken stream, while, like the Ancient 
Mariner, he fixed the spectator with his glittering 
eye. This foaming torrent was as unlike the ripple 
of his familiar talk as Niagara to a trout stream. 
To arrest it was nearly impossible, and he was 
impatient of interruption, even by way of assent, 
much more of dissent. The reader will probably 
like a specimen of this method, and here is one 
addressed to some Irish Americans : — 



An Harangue. 

" Irishmen might be assured there was no one in 
England wished ill to Ireland, as they had come to 
imagine. Quite the contrary, good men on all sides 
would applaud and assist any practical method for 



i82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

her relief. If he were given the task of lifting 
Ireland out of her misery, he would take counsel 
on all sides with men of practical knowledge on 
the best means of setting the people to work. He 
would ask such assistance from Parliament as might 
be necessary, and then carry out his scheme with 
unabating stringency. Whoever would not work 
must starve. He would begin with the workhouses, 
where men had delivered themselves up as bond 
slaves to society, by the confession that they could 
not exist by their own labour ; and at the outset he 
would organise t/iem. By-and-by he would transfer 
his workers to the Bog of Allan, or elsewhere, and 
bring them into contact with work to be done. 
Organisation was the essential basis of success, 
and he believed every trade must finally get itself 
organised as much as it could, even the trade of 
authorship, so that each man would be put to the 
work he was fittest to do, and not left wasting his 
strength and spirit in a totally useless direction. If 
a wise scheme like this were opposed — as, indeed, 
it was sure to be — one might rely on the sense of 
the community for maintaining it. If the Ministry 
of the day set themselves against it, men of sense 
would say to them. Get out of that, you ugly and 
foolish windbags : do you think the Eternal God of 
Nature will suffer j/ok to stand in the way of His 
work ? If you cannot open your eyes and see that 
,this is a thing that must be done, you had better 
betake yourselves elsewhere — to the lowest Gehenna 
were fittest — there is no place for you in a world 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 183 

which is ruled, in the long run, by fact and not by 
chimera. This is the course which ought to be 
taken. Men of sense might get the thing done, but 
men of no sense not at all. In democracy there 
was no help. Universal suffrage might be worth 
taking, and then men of sense would discover the 
limited use of it. For his part, if he could consult 
his horses, he would certainly ask them whether 
they preferred oats or vetches, quite sure they were 
the best judges on t/ia^ point ; but if they presumed 
to question the propriety of the road he was 
travelling, he would say, ' No, my worthy quad- 
rupeds, it is not to London I am going, but in quite 
another direction. I am going to Greenwich, for 
reasons too tedious to mention, and so let us set 
out without more delay.' The notion of settling 
any question by counting blockheads, or referring 
it to the decision of a multitude of fools, was alto- 
gether futile. The wise man must ponder on the 
right path in the silence of his own heart, and when 
found take it, though the whole multitude brayed 
at him with its many heads, which most probably 
they would — for a time." 

John Forster, who was present on one of these 
occasions, as soon as Carlyle paused, took the 
opportunity to assure me that there was no dislike 
of Irishmen in England, and no assumption of 
superiority. 

Carlyle said, if there was dislike, it arose from 
the way Irishmen conducted themselves in England. 



l84 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

They often entitled themselves to disfavour by their 
private performances. Irishmen who knew better 
must teach these persons to live quite differently, 
and they ought not to feel the slightest necessity 
for championing blackguards because they happened 
to be Irishmen. The curse and destruction of 
Ireland was her putting up silently — even con- 
tentedly, it would seem — with lies and falsities, and 
making heroes of manifest liars. Till this practice 
ended her case was hopeless. 

After an harangue there was generally a con- 
versation on the subject of it. On such an occasion, 
Carlyle listened patiently to dissent, and justified 
or illustrated his opinions calmly. The Scottish 
peasantry, he said, were gifted with silent intrepidity 
and valour. Their constant submission to the 
Divine Will, and their strict veracity, were qualities 
which it would behove Irish peasants to imitate, 
for, to say the truth, he had not found these qualities 
plentiful among them, nor the plain speaking which 
comes of honest thinking. 

I replied that he had never seen an Irish peasant 
in his natural condition, he had only seen a popula- 
tion resembling a famished crew just escaped from 
a shipwreck ; the Irish peasantry were intrinsically 
pious, generous, and veracious. The shiftiness and 
evasion which they sometimes exhibited in the 
witness-box were the devices of a people harassed 
by cruel laws and harsh masters. They evaded, 
but they would not violate, the sanctity of an oath. 
I remembered reading, when a boy, the story of a 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 185 

peasant put into the witness-box to give evidence 
against his own son, which chmg to my memory. 
The son was charged with stealing a sheep at a 
famine period, and his father, a venerable and pious 
old man, must, it was supposed, have seen the 
transaction, which at that time was a capital offence. 
"Did you awaken," he was asked, "on the night 
of Easter Eve after midnight ? " " Yis, sir, I did." 
" What did you see in the cottage at that time ? " 
" God help me ! I saw my boy with a sheep between 
his hands ; but oh ! your Honour, it was for me 
and the little Michael who were starving that he 
took it." The old man broke down, and the prisoner 
in the dock said something to him in a low voice 
in Irish. The judge asked to have it translated. 
" Courage, father, may the Saviour protect you and 
all of us ; you only do what is right, to tell the 
truth." This was the Irish peasant in his natural 
condition. 

Carlyle said the stories current of them by 
writers of their own country gave the impression 
of an idle, reckless race, with a levity which was 
not agreeable, but painful, to contemplate. 

I replied that one might as well judge England 
from the stories of Tim Bobbin, as Ireland from 
the stories of Maxwell or Lever. Some of the 
most significant maxims I could recall were Irish 
sayings, which I heard from my mother when I 
was a boy, and Irish legends revealing the deep 
sagacity which lay at the bottom of the national 
character. Here was one : In a dear summer, as 



i85 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the famine periods were called in Ireland, a small 
farmer was induced by his wife to send out his 
father to beg. The old man was equipped with a 
bag, a staff, and half a double blanket, which the 
frugal housewife prepared for him. After he was 
gone, she inquired for the moiety of the blanket 
to make sure he had not carried it off. When the 
house was ransacked in vain, the . father thought 
of asking his little son if he had seen it. "Yis, 
father," the boy replied, " I have put it by till the 
time comes when I'll want it." "What will you 
want with it, Owen agrah ? " inquired the father. 
"Why, father," replied the boy, "you see, when I 
grow up to be a big man, and I'll be sending you 
out to beg, I'll want it to put on your back." 

Carlyle said it was a homely apologue intended 
no doubt to illustrate the force of example ; we 
might safely assume that the old man was recalled 
from his begging expedition and put in the most 
comfortable corner of the cabin after that trans- 
action. 

Yes, I rejoined, and he must remember it was 
the apologue of an Irish peasant ; ^twd erat demon- 
strandum. 




MRS. CARLyi^K. 



Ipart jfourtb. 

There were few letters for the next three years 
except brief invitations or rendezvouses, as I Hved 
much in London, to attend Parliament, and saw 
Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle habitually. Her appearance 
at that time was peculiarly interesting. Her face 
was colourless but most expressive, answering 
promptly to every emotion ; her eyes were frank 
and pleasant, and her smile, which was gracious, 
passed easily into banter or mockery. Ill-health 
repressed the activity of her body, but not of her 
spirit, which was as vivacious as of old. 

There is one letter of this era worth printing as 
an illustration of Carlyle's thoughtful kindness for 
his friends, a disposition wholly incompatible with 
the character prejudiced gossips have come to attri- 
bute to him in recent times. 



"Chelsea, February 6, 1853. 
" Dear Duffy, — You never came to see me 
again, which was not well done altogether; but I 
am not writing of that at present. The time 
approaches when you will return, and then pro- 
bably we may do better. 

187, 



1 88 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" I remember hearing you speak, when here, 
about shelves for your books in your PimKco 
lodging. Now, it strikes me I have, lying in this 
garret, and of no use to anybody but the moths, 
a portion of my own old book-case, complete all 
but the nails ; a couple of standard sides — namely, 
and perhaps six or seven shelves of four or five feet 
long; a thing which any carpenter with sixpence 
worth of nails can knock together for you in an 
hour or two; which might hold 150 or 200 volumes; 
and which it would be a small but real comfort for 
me to know doing service for some friendly Chris- 
tian in this manner ! Pray think of it, if you still 
want such a thing ; and pray determine to have it. 
It is lying here, safe though dusty in the garret, 
tied together with ropes; and can be brought to 
you in a barrow; and will be proud to assist in 
your Parliamentary career; and when that is ended, 
or changed, will cheerfully serve as firewood, and 
make itself generally useful ! There is another 
couple of ' standards ' here ; but before I saved 
them for such a purpose, the headlong joiner had 
cut up the shelves of these. ... So stands it ; 
and will stand for you. In the name of the 
Prophet ! 

"Some one of your clerks is falling asleep at 
his post, I think. The Nation, vv^hich did not fail 
once in seven weeks to reach London on Saturday 
night, now (this good while) does not, above once 
in seven weeks, come till Monday morning — often 
not till Monday at eleven o'clock (which latter 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 

mistake I know is not yours) ; whereby, of course, 
my use of it, and much more important uses it has 
to serve in London, is much obstructed. A thing 
that should be remedied if it easily can. 

" One ' Thomas Muloch, Dublin,' sends me an 
acrid little pamphlet the other morning, solemnly 
denouncing and damning to the Pit, really in a 
rather sincere and devout manner, ' loth the Irish 
Churches ' (Protestant and Catholic), in the name 
of Jesus, and of any instalment of salvation to 
Ireland, of which native country he is a passionate 
lover. I fear the poor man is maddish. But I 
have thought a thousand times, since seeing Ireland, 
to much the same effect, in the name of still higher 
entities and considerations — though virtuously hold- 
ing my peace on the subject. The ' Churches ' 
alas, alas ! Of all preachers and prophets and 
divine men wanted in Ireland (and in England, and 
Scotland, and all the other wretched lands, where 
hypocritical palaver reigns and rules and makes 
the world fetid and accursed) is the ' Divine Drill- 
Serjeant' (as I often say) who, with steel whips 
or by whatever method, would teach poor canting 
slaves to do a little of the things they eloquently 
say (and even know) everywhere, and leave un^on&. 
Poor Muloch ! Really is there any such totally 
accursed sin as that (with no redeeming side at 
all) : or even such general, nay universal one, in 
this illustrious thrice-hopeful epoch of Free Press, 
Emancipation, Toleration, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and 
the rest of it ? 



190 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

"Adieu, dear Duffy; you need not write about 
that sublime question of the deal shelves, only send 
for them if fit to be accepted. I have been all this 
winter, if not idle, terribly abstracted, terribly un- 
successful in regard to getting any work done ! 
That really is the one thing ' terrible ' in this uni- 
verse. — Yours, ever truly, T. Carlyle." 



He took at first but limited notice of Parlia- 
mentary men or affairs, but I brought Mrs. Carlyle 
and her friend. Miss Jewsbury, to luncheon at the 
House of Commons, where she met some old 
friends, and her lively fancy played about the sub- 
ject so habitually afterwards that Carlyle was in- 
cited to take a little interest in it. He asked my 
opinion from time to time of the notable men in 
the Parliament of 1852, and uttered trenchant com- 
ments on them, but he knew httle or nothing 
personally of the men in question, and on reading 
the notes I find them hardly worth publishing. 

As session followed session I got more engrossed 
in Parliamentary work, and less able to visit Chelsea 
as of old. The work was sometimes so engrossing 
as to exclude all other occupation. I served on a 
Select Committee on the Irish Land Question at 
that time, of which Lord Palmerston, Bright, 
Sergeant Shee, Lucas, and other notable men were 
members, and I frequently attended its sittings at 
noon, and did not escape from the House of 
Commons until after midnight, a life altogether 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 191 

incompatible with social engagements. Finally, my 
health failed, and I had to take a holiday, during 
which a letter from Carlyle reached me. 



" Cn-KLSEA, June 22, 1854. 
"Dear Duffy, — I have called repeatedly at 
your place, but without any definite answer, till 
Sunday last, when the little girl informed me you 
were ' not to come back this season ! ' ' Back ' 
from Dublin or where, she could not say; nor, 
indeed, give any other response at all, except as 
to the negative fact, which has occasioned various 
confused reflections in me ever since. Once, in 
the Nation, I noticed the address of Malvern on 
one of your papers; and a little while before, I 
had seen with concern that some near relative had 
been taken from you by death. Pray, on all 
accounts, write me immediately a single word, 
wherever you may be (at Malvern still, as I could 
guess), to put an end to the freaks of imagination 
at least. Something evidently is wrong, or else 
I should have seen you long ago ; how much may 
be wrong, it is better to know than to keep 
guessing, in the morbid humour one gets into. 
Alas ! calamities abound, and sorrows of a harsh 
nature and also of a soft; and there is no want 
of burdens for the poor pilgrim in this world — 
who often gets foot-sore too, not so able to 
struggle along with his load. I am afraid you are 
not yourself in good health, in addition to all, but 



192 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

may have gone to Malvern, where indeed the fresh 
hill breezes may do you good, though the medical 
' sheetings,' &c., not very much. 

" I am myself in rather poor case this long 
while; decidedly below par in bodily health, and 
with a very fair proportion of other things to keep 
my spirits from, rising above their due level ! My 
work, too, which ought to be the consolation for 
all sorrows, and is really the only conquest one 
can make in this world, sticks obstinately in the 
slough, these many long months, let me try and 
wriggle as I will : in fact, it is the most ungainly 
job I ever had ; and _^re enough to burn up such 
a mass of sordid litter, and extract the thread of 
gold out of it (if there be any in it), is actually 
not at my disposal in my present mood. Let us 
hope, let us hope, nevertheless ! National Palaver 
and its affairs are without interest to me alto- 
gether of late; and, in fact, lie below the horizon 
as a thing I have no interest in. Crystal Palace, 
Turk War, Policy of Lord John, do., do. Not an 
ideal heroic world this ; no, not by any means !^ — 
Yours ever truly, T. Carlyle." 

Talk with Thackeray. 

During succeeding sessions I saw more of 
Carlyle, but had no leisure for notes ; one pleasant 
day, however, I find fully recorded in my diary : — 

July 28 [1855]. 7/ Vej'o Tomaso brought me 
to-day to see Thackeray. He is a large, robust. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 193 

fresh-looking man, with hair turning grey. The ex- 
pression of his face disappointed me ; the damaged 
nose and bad teeth mar its otherwise benign effect, 
and were imperfectly relieved by a smile which was 
warm but hardly genial. He is near-sighted, and 
said, "he must put on his glasses to have a good 
look at me." He told me he had met some of my 
friends in America, and liked them. John Dillon 
was a modest fellow, and Meagher pleased him by 
laughing at the popular ovations offered to him. 
They both said whatever they thought, frankly; 
rather a surprise to him, as in Ireland he had only 
met three men who spoke the truth ; but then, he 
added, smiling, he had not made the acquaintance 
of the Young Irelanders. I asked him if one might 
inquire the names of these three exceptional Irish- 
men. That would not be fair, he replied, to the 
remainder of his acquaintances; but he did not 
mind saying that Deasy was one of them [Rickard 
Deasy, then an Irish member, afterwards Attorney- 
General, and finally Baron of the Exchequer in 
Ireland]. He spoke of his intended lectures on 
the House of Hanover, and said he sometimes 
pondered the question whether every soul of these 

people he had to speak of was not d d in the 

end. The Marquis of Hertford receiving London 
society in an attitude seen elsewhere only in 
hospitals, surrounded by smiling crowds, who ate 
his dinners and congratulated him on his good 
looks, was a story from which he shrunk, which 
could be told indeed nakedly only by Swift. 

N 



194 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

I asked him about the Lindsay-Layard agitation, 
in which he had recently taken some part. He 
said they had ruined an excellent cause amongst 
them. Lindsay had made some remarkable state- 
ments certainly, but unhappily they did not bear 
investigation. Sir Charles Wood made pie of them. 
Layard was a good, simple soul, altogether unfit 
for the task he took in hand; he set him^self to 
overthrow the aristocratic scheme of patronage, 
and quite recently complained to him that the 
aristocracy had ceased to ask him to dinner ! The 
constitutional system was getting frightfully damaged 
in England, and we could not count on a long life 
for it in its present relations. I asked him how 
we were to get on in Ireland, where we had 
only the seamy side of the constitution ? He 
said he had never doubted our right to rebel 
against it, if we had only made sure of success ; 
but in the name of social tranquillity and common 
sense, he denied the legitimacy of unsuccessful 
rebellion. 

I rejoined that it was no more possible to make 
sure beforehand that you were going to win in an 
insurrection than in a game of roulette. You had 
to take your chance in both cases. So far as my 
reading carried me, I found that a successful re- 
bellion was often preceded by an unsuccessful one, 
which had the same identical provocation and justi- 
fication as its more fortunate successor. I spoke 
rapidly of the Irish famine, the exportation of the 
natural food of the people to pay inordinate rents. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 195 

the hopeless feebleness and fatuity of Lord John 
Russell's government, and the horrors of Skull and 
Skibereen, and I asked him to tell me, if he 
were an Irishman, what he would have done under 
the circumstances? He paused a moment, and 
replied : "I would perhaps have done as you 
did." 

We afterwards walked out together towards 
Hyde Park. We met an Italian image boy who 
had a bust of Louis Napoleon among the figures 
he carried on his head. Thackeray took off his hat 
and saluted it, half, but only half, mockingly, and 
murmured something about a man who understood 
his business and mastered the art of government. 
I said Carlyle's theory of governing by the best 
man woidd be very satisfactory if we could always 
contrive to catch the best man, but I objected under 
any pretence to be governed by the worst, however 
carefully he had studied the art. 

We had been talking a little before of Prince 
Albert's speech (about constitutional government 
being on its trial), and Thackeray said that John 
Lemoinne told him that he was reprimanded for 
reflecting on it in the Journal des Debats, and that 
he believed the instigation had come from Windsor. 
The talk turned upon books, and I told him I had 
noted with wonder the accuracy, or rather the 
fitness, of the Irish names of men and places in 
" Barry Lyndon " that being the point where a 
stranger usually blunders or breaks down. He 
said he had lived a good deal among Irish people 



N 196 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

in London and elsewhere. Carlyle graciously re- 
frained from taking any part in the conversation, 
which struck me as a fine piece of courtesy. 

As we walked towards Chelsea, after parting 
with Thackeray, Carlyle said that all this talk 
about administrative reform was very idle and 
worthless. The people of England lived by stead- 
fast industry, and took no heed at all of questions 
of patronage and promotion. The public service in 
England was notoriously the honestest in Europe, 
the least liable to be diverted from its duty by any 
temptation, and that was nearly all one wanted to 
know about it. If there was any possibility of 
getting honest work done just now, there was much 
need of quite other work than those people had in 
hand. Think of the inorganic mass of men in the 
disjointed districts called London, with a population 
equal to that of half-a-dozen Greek States of old, 
bestridden by aldermen and vestrymen, with all 
their haranguing and debating apparatus, whom we 
are ordered to obey (if it were possible) as the 
guardians of our interests, but who could not 
supply us from year's end to year's end with a 
wholesome glass of clean water. 

I said it might be of slight importance to pros- 
perous people how the service was filled, but it was 
not a matter of indifference to the considerable class 
who found the public service their only road to 
employment that was not servile. It seemed to me 
a serious and dangerous injustice in the English 
system that all the great prizes of public life were 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 197 

reserved for the aristocracy, and all the petty prizes 
for their nominees. 

Carlyle replied that this assumption did not re- 
present the actual fact as one found it in operation. 
The higher classes, having more leisure and easier 
access to Parliament, naturally came in for more of 
the guerdons which were distributed in that region, 
but probably no one was denied the share he 
was fairly entitled to, especially in the highest 
offices. 

Edmund Burke, I said, was a conspicuous ex- 
ample of one who had been denied his share. 

Carlyle replied that he did not know what Edmund 
Burke had to complain of He came to London 
having nothing, and people there, the aristocracy 
chiefly, made him a leading man in the business 
he worked in; he became a Privy Councillor and 
a Minister of the Crown, and died leaving a good 
estate. This was not an inconsiderable payment 
for the strange industry he was engaged in ; what 
was to be desired more ? 

Why, I replied, it was to be desired that he had 
been recognised for what he undoubtedly was — 
the brain and soul of his party. He was never 
admitted to the Cabinet of which he framed the 
policy, and which he defended in the House of 
Commons with supreme ability. It seemed to me 
a public scandal that Charles Fox was set over 
the head of a man who taught him his business, 
onl}'' because Fox was one of the aristocracy, 
that is to say, was the son of a disreputable and 



198 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

unprincipled politician, who had grown rich by 
nefarious jobbing, and who was made a peer 
only because he had become intolerable to the 
House of Commons. 

The Cabinet, Carlyle replied, was in those days 
composed for the most part of great peers, and 
Burke, or any one on his behalf, might as reason- 
ably complain that he was not made a marquis 
as that he was not made a member of the Cabinet. 
There is perpetually something above a man which 
he does not attain, and it was good sense of a ver}^ 
essential sort to be content without it. Burke's 
achievements, which might have been conveniently 
abridged, had obtained in substance the reward he 
sought and expected. 

I asked him about a lively little book, written 
by one of the Lindsay-Layard party, in a dialect 
which was then called Carlylese, and inquired if 
he had read it. Yes, he said, he had looked into 
it, and noted the resemblance I spoke of. It was 
like his style, if he might be supposed to be a judge 
of the matter, as like perhaps as the reflection of 
his face in a dish-cover was like that entity. 

He inquired whether the address of Malvern, 
which he read in a letter of mine in the news- 
papers, indicated that I had been at the water cure. 
I said it did. I read a pamphlet of Bulwer Lytton's 
entitled the " Confessions of a Water Patient," de- 
'scribing the water cure as a magical remedy for 
the exhaustion of literary or political work, and I 
gave it a trial. The early hours, simple meals, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 199 

and absolute rest, were balsamic ; but I had slight 
faith in the system, which was kept alive largely 
by fables. We were told how patients were 
carried into the establishment, and after a few 
weeks walked out, but nothing was said of cases 
where the patients walked in, and were carried 
out in an oak box. The fanaticism of some of the 
patients passed belief One poor fellow, who was 
visibly fading away, told me that his relapses were 
part of the cure : the doctor must break him down 
before he could build him up ! Crowds of new 
patients arrived every week, and nobody asked 
what became of those who disappeared. My time 
passed pleasantly enough, as there were intelligent 
people to talk to — Indian officers, Oxford professors, 
Californian diggers, and London men and women 
of letters. 

Carlyle said he had marvelled to note during the 
summer months what a steady stream of simpletons 
set from London to Worcestershire. 

Yes, I said, simpletons tempered by sages. My 
bathman told me, and every one who would listen 
to him, of his attendance on Mr. Carlyle, and of 
that great man's behaviour under the douche, or 
wrapped in wet sheets like an Egyptian mummy 
swathed in its cerements. The bathman was a 
living witness that a man may still occasionally be 
a hero to his z'a/ei de cJiainbre. 

Carlyle laughed, and said that it was very proper 
that he should be found out. A number of friendly 
people, John Forster principally, he believed, in- 



200 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

duced him to go to Malvern on the evidence of 
Bulwer Lytton that it was a panacea for dyspepsia 
and all its kin, and he had fared as a man deserves 
to fare who puts faith in such testimony. He was 
somewhat ashamed of the adventure. Dr. Gully 
was not without insight, but somebody said — it was 
probably Thackeray — of the other practitioners that 
the system had been discovered in Germany by an 
inspired peasant, and was administered in England 
by peasants who were not inspired. 



Sir Arthur Helps. 

I asked him about Mr. Helps, whose " Essays 
in the Intervals of Business " I had read with even 
more pleasure than " Friends in Council," though 
the vivid talk of the " Friends " gave a freshness 
to commonplace. Elsmere seemed to me, I said, 
as dramatically conceived and as consistently drawn 
as Sir Roger de Coverley. 

Mr. Helps, he answered, had been over in 
Ireland in an official situation, private secretary 
to the Lord-Lieutenant or other eminent personage, 
but he left this place to retire on literature exclu- 
sively. He had been a rich man, but latterly 
had lost some of his fortune somehow, and now 
lived near Southampton and wrote books. He 
was not at all a considerable man, but he had 
some truth in him, and pretty bits of fancy too. 
One of his little books reduced him to death's door 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 201 

in producing it, and there was a long convalescence 
in each case. He was writing now on the slave 
trade from the far-off beginning of it. He was 
rather wearisome from the little bits of theories 
and speculations he kept talking and talking about, 
and he had a bad fashion, which he learned up 
in London, of making a joke of everything that 
turned up, even when one could perceive he was 
serious and anxious at bottom. When Emerson 
was in England, Helps met him and Carlyle down 
at Stonehenge, and brought them home with him. 
The circumstance remained in his memory because 
Emerson broached some amazing theories there 
about war altogether ceasing in the world, but 
when he was closely pressed on the method of 
this prodigious change, luckily for him luncheon 
was announced, and he would not speak one word 
more. 



Australia. 

In the autumn of 1855, I resigned my seat in 
the House of Commons and emigrated to Australia. 
The end for which I entered Parliament had been 
rendered hopeless by the perfidy of some of my 
colleagues, and I resolved to mark my sense of 
the condition to which they had reduced the Irish 
cause by peremptory retirement.^ In July I said 
farewell to the Carlyles, sailed three months later, 

^ The story is told in detail in the " League of North and 
South." Chapman & Hall. 



202 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and landed at Melbourne in the beginning of 1856. 
During my first three years in Australia the onl}^ 
communications from Carlyle were a couple of brief 
letters of introduction; but in 1859 the stream 
began to flow anew. 

The reference in the next letter to a town alludes 
to the township of Carlyle on the Murray river, 
which, as Minister of Public Lands, I had named 
after the philosopher. 

" Chelsea, London, AJ>ri7 13, 1859. 
" Dear Duffy, — I confess I have been remiss 
in writing to you ; shamefully so, if you did not 
know the circumstances, or believe in them with- 
out knowing ! To want of remembering you I 
will by no means plead guilty ; and I have had no 
letters, or one and a /i a// (with excellent continua- 
tion by Mrs. Callan) which were heartily welcomed 
— welcomer than hundreds that did get answer of 
some kind ! The truth is I have been swimming 
in bottomless abysses, whipt and whirled about 
as man never was, for long years past ; and there 
are still many months of it ahead ; it was afte7' 
all this should have once rolled itself away that I 
always want to write to you, a free man once more 
(no Prussian or other rubbish crushing the life out 
of me), till which fine consummation, though my 
conscience did a little back upon me now and then, 
it backed to no purpose, as you have seen ! This 
is the true history of that phenomenon ; and I leave 
it with you. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. -203 

" As I said, there are months and twelvemonths 
still of that sad Prussian operative pressing on me ; 
and one knows not how long the foolish speech- 
lessness might have lasted, had it not been for a 
message that arrived this morning, the letter here 
enclosed, which cannot brook being neglected by 
me. I shove Frederick aside, therefore (more luck 
to him), and hasten, with a bad or good grace, to 
do the needful. 

" Please read carefully that enclosed letter from 
Macready to me ; it will bring the whole case 
accurately before you ; and if you can do anything 
in it, I will earnestly request you, for my sake 
withal, to do it with your best might. I know not 
if you are aware, as I am, that the private worth 
and merits of Mr. Macready, senior, are of the 
highest order; a man of scrupulous veracity, cor- 
rectness, integrity, a kind of Grandisonian style 
of magnanimity, both in substance and manner, 
visible in all his conduct. I have often said, look- 
ing at his ways as a ' public ' person, ' Here is a 
playhouse manager, dependent on the populace 
for everything, and there is no bishop of souls in 
England who dare appeal to the truth, and defy 
the devil and his angels, except this very singular ' 
bishop, whose diocese is Drury Lane. In fact, I 
greatly esteem the man ; and his domestic losses 
and distresses (loss of an excellent, noble, little 
wife ; loss of child after child, so soon as they 
grew up ; loss of, &c. &c.) have filled me and others 
with sympathy for him in these years. I add only 



204 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

that he is an Irishman (that his wife was Irish, a 
pretty little being, whom I think he found an actress, 
and whom he left a high and real gentlewoman in 
her sphere), so that you see the whole case is 
Irish ; and if Macready, junior, whom I do not 
know, but whose father's account of him I credit 
to the last particular, ca7t be launched in an honest 
career, and made useful among his fellow-creatures, 
it will be, on every side, in the line of your voca- 
tion. This, I think, is about the substance of all 
I had to say. You will take it all for truth, my 
exactest notion of the truth ; and then I must 
leave it with you. The young man will appear in 
person, and you can take survey of him. What 
is fairly possible I have no doubt you will do ; 
and I need not repeat that it would be pleasant to 
me among its other results. So enough. 

" The ' Township of Carlyle ' (more power to it) 
amused us very much, and there was in it a kind 
of interest, pathetic and other, which was higher 
than amusement. ' Stuart-Mill Street,' ' Sterling 
Street ' (especially Jane Street), I could almost have 
wept a little (had any tears now remained me) at 
these strange handwritings on the wall ; stern and 
sad, the meaning of that to me, as well as laugh- 
able. In short, it is a very pretty device ; and if 
in the chief square or place they one day put the 
statue of C. G. D. himself, when he has become 
head in the colony and led it into the good way 
(which is far off just now), I shall by no means be 
sorry. For the rest, the Plans, &c., of Carlyle are 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 205 

firmly bound and secured, along with a learned 
volume of Scottish antiquarian biography, and there 
wait till they become antique if possible. I send 
the most cordial regards to Mrs. Callan, amiable, 
much suffering body. — I am, as of old, yours truly, 

"T. Carlyle." 



This was the letter enclosed : — 

" Sherborne, ^prz7 13, 1859. 

"My dear Mr. Carlyle, — I have a great 
favour to ask of you, a most important service; 
which, in the belief that, if you can, you will render 
it, becomes on my part a duty to request of you. 
I might introduce the subject with preparatory 
apologies, but I know I should gain nothing by 
them in your opinion or in the furtherance of the 
object of my application ; and that, if there should 
be impediments to your acquiescence in my solicita- 
tion, they will be valid ones. 

" My second son, after some indecision, adopted 
of his own free choice the military profession, and 
entered the East India Company's service with the 
most hopeful prospects of advancement. Unhappily 
he was not proof to the idle and reckless course of 
life too often pursued by Indian officers, and, after 
a brief career of folly and extravagance, was obliged 
from insubordinately resenting the rebuke of his 
commanding officer, to resign his commission. 

" I have reason to believe he is now thoroughly 
awakened to a sense of his indiscretion, and is 



2o6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

deeply repentant of the ill conduct into which he 
has been betrayed. I have full faith in the sincerity 
of his penitence, and of his desire and determination 
to redeem himself in character, if he can only obtain 
the means of exerting himself creditably. 

" He is still in Bombay, where he has been un- 
successful (as indeed might naturally be expected) 
in all his endeavours to obtain employment. On 
all accounts it is desirable that he should leave 
India; and Australia seems the only land, where 
by diligence, endurance, and upright bearing, he 
may have a chance of raising himself in the esteem 
of friends and in his own respect. Our mutual 
friend, Forster, informs me that Mr. Gavan Duffy, 
who holds office there, which gives him the dis- 
tribution of employment to a very considerable 
extent, would be happy in paying attention to any 
suggestion of yours. Here is my prayer : if you 
can befriend my unfortunate boy with your interest, 
he may yet do credit to his family and to your 
recommendation. My last wish would be a sine- 
cure, or even easy work for him. The discipline 
of systematic effort is needful to sustain his good 
resolutions, and may be the making of him. His 
colonel, in writing to me, laid stress upon the point, 
that in his errors he knew of nothing to bring his 
honour into question; and his recent letters give me 
assurance, that if opportunity be granted to him, he 
will never again abuse it. 

" Can you assist me in this most pressing need, 
either by writing direct to Mr. Duffy, or through 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 207 

the hands of my son Edward ? He is only 23, and 
has drunk deeply enough of adversity's bitter cup 
to receive from it a healthful tone for the life that 
may be before him. He is not without abilities, and 
with industry may turn them to good account. 
■ " I am bold to think, that if you can thus greatly 
serve me you will do it. I will not say, being sure 
you know, how gratefully I should receive this 
saving act of friendship from you. I have been 
going to write to Mrs. Carlyle about an intimation 
of a western journey, which she held out ; will you 
say to her, with my most affectionate regards, that 
I defer the letter but a little longer ? — Believe me, 
dear Mr. Carlyle, always and most sincerely yours, 

"W. C. Macready." 



Macready junior duly appeared, and was a gentle- 
manly prepossessing young fellow, with consider- 
able intelligence and observation. He spoke of his 
Indian experience with perfect unreserve, and be- 
wailed the ruin of young officers from indolence, and 
the habit of tippling brandy-and-water which the 
climate induced. He spoke like one who saw and 
deplored errors of his own, which he would scorn 
to conceal. I was pleased with him, and offered 
him an admission to the Civil Service of the colony, 
where none of the temptations which assailed him 
in military service need exist, and where he might 
re-establish himself in the good opinion of his 
father. He surprised me by replying that he had 



2o8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

no desire to enter the public service ; he believed 
he possessed some of the gifts which made his 
father famous, and would prefer to try the stage. 
I predicted that his father would disapprove of this 
design, but he was immovable. I took him to Mr. 
Coppin, the manager of the principal Melbourne 
theatre, and as the young man thought that light 
comedy was his speciality, Mr. Coppin agreed to 
give him an opportunity of playing Captain Absolute, 
provided his real name appeared in the play-bills. 
Mr. Macready drew one great audience, but not a 
second, and he gradually descended in the theatrical 
scale till he reached the bottom, and finally died 
prematurely. 

His father acknowledged my slight services 
warmly, and I kept an eye on the young man 
as long as there was any hope of helping him 
effectually. 

"Sherborne House, Sherborne, 
Dorset, _/(2;z?(ta;j 24, i860. 

"My Dear Sir, — It is not an easy thing to 
satisfy oneself in acknowledging benefits of the 
greatest value, and which are beyond the reach 
of requital. I am quite unequal to the task. 
You have done all that a friend could do to with- 
draw my son from a dangerous, I may say an 
evil course, and aided him, as far as prudence 
could warrant, even when persisting in his most 
blamable resolution. 

" My thanks are poor and weak in conveying to 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 209 

you my sense of your great kindness, and of my 
lasting obligation to you ; but you will accept them, 
I am sure, in the spirit of sincerity in which they 
are offered. 

"You will still further oblige me by drawing 
on me at Messrs. Ranson, Bouverie, & Co., i Pall 
Mall East, for the ;^I0 which you so obligingly 
furnished my son. He had no right to be in 
need of it, and the adoption of the mode of life 
he has resorted to, he knew, is beyond all others 
most repugnant to my wishes, 

" I need not add my request that you will not 
make him any further advance. It is a sad re- 
flection, that he should have turned to such a 
purpose the means I had used for re-establishing 
him in a respectable position. But for all you have 
done to deter him and forward my views for him, 
I am, and must ever be, your truly grateful debtor. 
— Believe me, my dear sir, your deeply obliged 
and very faithful, W. C. Macready. 

"Hon. Gavan Duffy.'' 

I made some renewed efforts to restore the young 
man to serious courses, which his father acknow- 
ledged profusely. 

"6 Wellington Square, Cheltenham, 
August 7, i860. 

"My dear Sir, — I feel more obliged to you 
than I have powers of expression for. You have 
done all in your power to rescue my son from the 

O 



2IO THOMAS CARLYLE. 

desperate course in which he has deliberately pre- 
cipitated himself, and my gratitude to you for such 
invaluable service is sincere and most fervent. 

" I wish I could encourage the hope, that he may 
yet see the error of his ways, and avail himself of 
your ready wish to aid him in recovering himself. 
I can only say, God grant it, again and again 
thanking you for your great kindness. 

"With every cordial wish for your health and 
happiness. — I remain, my dear sir, most sincerely 
and gratefully yours, W. C. Macready. 

" Hon. Gavan Duffy." 



Sir Henry Parkes. 

The Parkes to whom the next note refers was 
Sir Henry Parkes, Prime Minister of New South 
Wales down to the close of last year, but, at the 
time Carlyle wrote, Emigration Agent for his colony 
in England. His fellow Emigration Agent was 
William Bede Dalley, on whom public opinion in 
England has bestowed a memorial tablet in St. Paul's 
for his share in the Australian expedition to the 
Soudan. 

"Chelsea, November lo, 1861. 

"Dear Duffy, — Your friend Parkes, who did 

not present himself till quite lately, ' hearing I was 

so busy,' came the other evening, and gave us a 

few pleasant hours. We find him a robust, effec- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 211 

tive, intelligent, and sincere kind of man, ex- 
tremely loyal to C. G. D. ; which is not one of his 
smallest merits here. He gave me several more 
precise notions about Australian life ; seemed to 
be thoroughly at home in the anarchic democratic 
Universal-Palaver element, and to swim about it, 
with a candid joy, like a fish in water ; and indeed, 
I could not but own that in comparison with the old 
Colonial Office and Parliamentary-Fogie methods 
of administration, it might be a real improvement; 
and that, in short, in the present anarchic condition 
of England, there was nothing for it, but to let her 
colonies go, in this wild manner, down the wind, 
whither they listed, till once it became insupportable 
to the poor minority of wise men among them- 
selves, and they (probably sword-in-hand) could 
resolve to take some course with it, life to them 
having grown worse than death under such condi- 
tions. It is my prophecy for Yankeeland, and for 
England, and for all countries with National-Palaver 
and Penny Newspapers in them ; if the gods intend 
that these nations are to continue above ground, 
said nations will have to abolish, or tightly chain 
up, all that (so far as I can form the last opinion), 
or if the nation prefers not to abolish, it can at its 
own good pleasure go down ; to very /iot quarters 
indeed, and will find i;ie a resigned man, whichever 
way ! But I waste my paper sadly. 

"The worst news Parkes gave us was, that you 
did not seem to be in good health ; bad health he 
sometimes defined your situation to be, when we 



212 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

pressed him for details. That you are out of 
office for the last eighteen months is, since you 
have means of modest livelihood independent, rather 
a pleasure to hear ; but this of health — Alas, alas ! 
could not the Victoria people be persuaded to send 
j/ou as their * Agent ' hitherward ? Anything that 
would bring you home, how welcome were it to us ! 
Or would not your means, though modest,, enable 
you to live /lere as well as at Melbourne ? What 
a book j/ou might write on that wild continent of 
things ; what books and instructions ; how much 
good you might really do. If not loaded with 
nuggets, if only able to live as a poor man, so 
much the better, on my word. You promised to 
come home at any rate, and see us again. If you 
delay too long, some of us will not be discoverable 
here, when you land expectant. I write to try for 
a letter, at the greatest length you can afford, and 
without long time, elucidating these and the cognate 
points, which you need not doubt are at all times 
interesting to me. Many people, as you may fancy, 
have criticised you to me ; I answer always, * Yes, 
yes, and of all the men I saw in Ireland, the two 
best J so far as I could judge, were Lord George Hill 
and Charles Duffy, even he and that other ! ' 

"By the lex talionis I have not the least right 
to a letter; but if you knew the case here, you 
would completely drop that plea. It is a literal 
fact that I have not, for years past, any leisure at 
all; but have had to withdraw out of all society, 
and employ every available minute of my day 




k^)^ _ fvL , 1 <L.J' I^Ci 



l.c.C^y'nl 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 213 

(hardly four good hours to be had out of it with 
never such thrift, in these sad circumstances !) for 
running a race, which is too hterally a flight from 
the infernal Hunt, who is at my heels till I get out 
of that bad Prussian business. I ride daily, have 
ridden on a horse, which I call * Fritz ' (an amiable, 
swift, loyal creature, now falling old) for eight years 
past : I think about 24,000 miles or so in quest 
'of health to go on with,' and do not write the 
smallest note if it can possibly be helped ! This is 
true, and I will say no more of it ; only let it serve 
you for an explanation, and in the course of next 
summer or autumn, I do now hope I shall be out 
of this unutterable quagmire (dark to me as Erebus, 
too often, and too long), and shall then have more 
leisure, leisure to the end of the chapter, as I in- 
tend ! For I have for once got a complete bellyful 
of * work ' — curiously enough reserved for me to 
finish off with. In my young time I had no work 
that was not a mere flea-bite to this which lay ap- 
pointed for my old days. 

" It is only by accident I have found time and 
spirit to write you so much. My intention, un- 
executed for weeks and months back, was only to 
send you the enclosed bad photograph accompanied 
by a word or two, which might stand as apology 
for a letter. I dare say you recognise the riding 
figure, though he has little or no face allowed. 
The standing gentleman is Frederic Chapman, 
junior, of the firm, a prosperous gentleman who 
has dismounted from a horse ditto. There is a 



214 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Strange worth in indisputable certainty, however 
Hmited. I wish you would send me such a sun- 
picture from Melbourne ; it would be very welcome 
here. Will you give my affectionate regards to 
Mrs. Callan ? Parkes told me the doctor had got 
an honourable and profitable employment in his 
noble profession, which I was very glad of. My 
wife desires to be remembered, as do I, kindly to 

Mrs. D , of whom I have still an agreeable 

shadow left. — Yours, ever truly, 

"T. CARLYLE." 



That visit home referred to in Carlyle's last letter 
was made in the beginning of 1865, after ten years' 
residence in Australia. A few days after my return, 
before I had time to visit Chelsea, I had a pleasant 
note from Mrs. Carlyle. 

" 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 

Wednesday, April 16, 1865. 

" My dear Mr. Duffy, — Mr. Carlyle read in a 
newspaper ten days ago that you had 'returned 
from Australia, and were stopping in London.' I 
said it couldn't be true ; for you wouldn't have been 
many hours in London without coming to see us. 
But Mr. C. thought otherwise — that you might have 
found no time yet — and he desired me to put 
George Cooke (a friend of ours who can find out 
everything) on discovering where you were lodged. 
Had this failed, I suppose he would have advertised 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 215 

for you in the Times ; if still you had made no 
sign! 

"You may figure then how glad I was when 
your letter and basket arrived to me this morning, 
just as I was starting off for my long daily drive. 
Since I came back I have done nothing but admire 
the various presents you have sent me, and think 
how kind it was of you to collect these things for 
me so far away. 

" But we want to see you ; when will you come ? 

"Mr. C. says he is going to call for you to- 
morrow morning ; but most likely you will be gone 
out. So it would be best to make an appointment 
to meet here at dinner, say at six o'clock, when a 
man's day's work is or ought to be done ! Name 
any day you like, only let it be soon, if you please, 
for I am impatient to see you. — Affectionately yours, 

"Jane W. Carlyle. 

" Hon. Chas. Gavan Duffy, Grosvenor Hotel." 



I remained a couple of years in Europe, and 
when in London went to Cheyne Row constantly. 
On Sunday I generally walked two or three hours 
in the parks with Carlyle; he talked as frankly 
as of old, but I was closely engaged and had seldom 
leisure to make notes. A few exceptional conversa- 
tions, however, I have found in a diary in which 
I kept reminiscences of travel. 

When I saw him first he thanked me for acting 
so promptly on his letters of introduction, and 



2i6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

inquired if these sort of things were commonly of 
much use to emigrants. I said they were like 
French assignats, the emission was so excessive 
that no one any longer wished to touch them. It 
was easy to write a letter, but it was cruel to 
write it, if it raised hopes which could not be 
realised. And as of old there were forged assignats 
in circulation ; a man brought me from New York 
a familiar and aJEfectionate letter which I had reason 
in the end to believe he purchased, and it was from 
a person whose name I had never heard before. I 
was most provoked by introductions from men in 
Parliament and office who had patronage of their 
own. There was a case in the English newspapers 
a few years ago arising out of a complaint a school- 
mistress made against a Minister of State, one of 
the most conspicuous men in Europe indeed, and 
shortly afterwards the lady and her husband 
appeared in Melbourne, and he called upon me 
with a couple of impressive introductions from 
important persons. I asked him if he were the 
plaintiff in such and such a case, and he said 

" Yes." I asked if the charges against Lord P 

were well founded. "Ah," he said, "that was a 
long story," "Well," I replied, "I must under- 
stand your long story very distinctly before I take 
these letters of introduction into consideration." I 
extracted from him by patient cross-examination 
that certain influential friends had advised him to 
drop the case, that the same generous patrons had 
sent him to Australia with a couple of hundred 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 217 

pounds in his pocket, and armed with irresistible 
letters of recommendation. I was in doubt at the 
outset whether he was an honest man driven to 
emigrate by powerful enemies, a blackmailer who 
had made a false charge against an eminent states- 
man, or an injured man who had salved the wound 
to honour by a handful of money. He left me in 
no doubt upon the point, and I showed him to the 
door and threw his letters of introduction into the 
waste-paper basket. 

Carlyle inquired who had sent the letters, and 
when he heard their names condemned them 
sharply. One of my friends in London after- 
wards told me that when the septuagenarian (who 
had as little sense of moral diffidence as one of 
Congreve's fine gentlemen) was rallied by his 
colleagues on this unseemly adventure, he mur- 
mured gaily, " Que voulez-vouz vion ami ? Boys 
will be boys." 

Carlyle told me an amusing story about the same 
eminent personage. There was a State dinner at 
his house, including the cream of the official world. 
Every one present except the wife of the American 
Minister was familiar with a scandal which attri- 
buted to their host illegitimate relations with the 
wife of one of his colleagues, whom he married 
after her husband's death. Her son during the 
first marriage was brought in to dessert at the 
State dinner. When he approached the American 
lady she put her hand on the boy's head, and look- 
ing affectionately at her host, exclaimed, " Ah, my 



2i8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

lord, no one need ask who is this young gentle- 
man's papa." 

I spoke to him of Cobden, whose death I had 
heard of with the deepest regret, from the pilot who 
came on board our ship in the Channel, who was 
full of the tragic news. Yes, he said, a pack of idle 
shrieking creatures were going about crying out 
that the great Richard was dead, as if the world 
was coming to an end, which it was not at all, at 
least in that regard. Bright, he considered one of 
the foolishest creatures he had ever heard of, 
clamouring about America and universal suffrage, 
as if there was any sensible man anywhere in the 
world who put the smallest confidence in that sort 
of thing now-a-days. Their free trade was the 
most intense nonsense that ever provoked human 
patience. The people of Australia were quite right 
to protect their industries and teach their young 
men trades in complete disregard of Parliamentary 
and platform palaver. No nation ever got manu- 
factures in any other way. 

I said it was not desirable to have a permanent 
population of diggers ready to fly from " rush " to 
rush, as new discoveries were made, but, if possible, 
a settled population engaged in all the ordinary 
pursuits of life ; and Australians were willing to 
make a sacrifice to secure this end. They did 
right, he said, and I might lay this to heart, that of 
all the mad pursuits any people ever took up gold 
digging was the maddest and stupidest. If they 
got as much gold as would make a bridge from 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 219 

Australia to Europe it would not be worth a mealy 
potato to mankind. 

The next time I saw him he told me that he 
had consented to be nominated Lord Rector of 
Edinburgh University on condition that no in- 
augural address should be required from him. His 
rival was Disraeli, who beat him before at Glasgow 
— being a person altogether more agreeable to the 
popular taste. Madame, who was present, assured 
me, however, that an address would be forthcoming 
in good time. He made Hght of the affair, treating 
it as a bore, which perhaps, after all, it was better 
to endure patiently, since certain persons took an 
interest and had taken trouble in the business. Both 
he and she have a repressed but very natural and 
justifiable pride in it nevertheless. 

Two days later I went over to Cheyne Row and 
found Madame going out to dine with Lady William 
Russell, I drove with her and had a very pleasant 
talk. She is frankly proud of the Lord Rectorship 
intended for Carlyle, and declares that he must 
deliver an address. She told with admirable humour 
a story of her going to inquire for a lost dog, to 
the shop of one of the gentry whose profession 
is to find and lose dogs. When she entered she 
meant to ask him if he sold dogs, but her mind 
was so possessed by the actual facts of the case, 
that she blurted out, " Pray, sir, do you steal 
dogs ? " Returned to Cheyne Row, where two 
Southern Americans, Colonel La Trobe and Mr. 
Thomson, were with Carlyle. They were evi- 



220 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

dently delighted with Carlyle's pro-slavery opinions. 
He insists that the South cannot be ruled on New 
England principles, and that towards any solution 
of the difficulty it would be indispensable to return 
to some modification of slave-holding. 

I must mention a couple of incidents at this 
period which will not surprise those who knew 
Carlyle, but are hard to reconcile with the new 
theory of his domineering disposition and impatience 
of contradiction. In fact, good-humoured and good- 
natured dissent were never accepted with more 
equanimity and cordiality by any man, and if it 
bore a little hard on himself or his opinions, it had 
not the worse reception for that. 

One Sunday, walking to Battersea Park with 
two or three friends, one of whom since became a 
judge and another was an eminent man of letters, 
we came on a street preacher haranguing a mob at 
the top of his voice : " Will you open your ears 
to the word of God, my brethren ? " he cried : " Do 
you accept this message which I bring you from 
the fountain of living truth ? " " Not altogether, 
my friend, if you insist upon knowing," Carlyle 
whispered with comical emphasis when we had 
passed the preacher. " And why not ? " asked one 
of his friends. "You reject him with scorn, but 
what he looks to you is precisely what the first 
Puritan looked to Laud or Strafford — an ignorant 
fanatic dogmatising on questions which he did not 
understand." 

One evening he was declaiming against Oxford 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 221 

converts, a theme which he knew I disliked, for 
Dr. Newman was an honoured friend. When he 
had finished I told him that a comrade of mine 
was fond of saying that Carlyle's contempt for 
Newman suggested Satan disparaging the archangel 
Michael. "Why, sir, Michael (Satan would pro- 
bably say), is a poor creature ; he has never seen 
the world, but dozed away life in unquestioning 
service and submission. Michael, if one will con- 
sider it well, has the intellect of a cherub, a cherub, 
you will please to understand, docked at the 
shoulders, with nothing left but a bullet head to 
construct little bits of sermons and syllogisms." 

Carlyle laughed, and said he would have to insist 
in the end on my naming this anonymous critic who 
was for ever turning up as counsel for the other 
side. He manifestly suspected that I myself was 
the unknown critic, but this pleasant parody on 
Carlyle's method had been actually improvised over 
the dinner-table by the late Judge O'Hagan. 



Current Literature. 

I inquired shortly after seeing him whether he 
would follow Frederick by any other historical 
study. No, he said, he would probably write no 
more books ; writing books was a task to which 
a man could not be properly encouraged in these 
times. Modern literature was all purposeless and 
distracted, and led he knew not where. Its pro- 



222 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

fessors were on the wrong path just now, and he 
beheved the world would soon discover that some 
practical work done was worth innumerable " Oliver 
Twists" and "Harry Lorrequers," and any amount 
of other ingenious dancing on the slack rope. The 
journalism which called itself critical had grown 
altogether Gallic, and exulted over the windy plati- 
OJtudes of Lam^rtine and the erotics of George 
Sand. 

Mrs. Carlyle, who was present, said we had small 
right to throw the first stone at George Sand, though 
she had been caught in the same predicament as 
the woman of old, if we considered what sort of 
literary ladies might be found in London at present. 

I'^'M. ^ci'i vV'.'^^^^ one was first told that the strong woman of 
the Westminster Review had gone off with a man 
whom we all knew, it was as startling an announce- 
ment as if one heard that a woman of your acquaint- 
ance had gone off with the strong man at Astley's ; 
but that the partners in this adventure had set up 
as moralists was a graver surprise. To renounce 
George Sand as a teacher of morals was right 
enough, but it was scarcely consistent with making 
so much of our own George in that capacity, A 
marvellous teacher of morals, surely, and still more 
marvellous in the other character, for which nature 
had not provided her with the outfit supposed to be 
essential. 

^. St e.^x/'•€/<!l The gallant, I said, was as badly equipped for an 
Adonis, and conqueror of hearts. Yes, Carlyle 
replied, he was certainly the ugliest little fellow 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 223 

you could anywhere meet, but he was lively and 
pleasant. In this final adventure it must be admitted 
he had escaped from worse, and might even be said 
to have ranged himself. He had originally married 
a bright little woman, daughter of Swinfin Jervis, 
a disreputable Welsh member ; but every one knew 
how that adventure had turned out. Miss Evans 
advised him to quit a household which had broken 
bounds in every direction. His proceeding was not 
to be applauded, but it. could scarcely be said that 
he had srone from bad to worse. 



A Dispute. 

In all our intercourse for more than a generation 
I had only one quarrel with Carlyle, which occurred 
about this time, and I wish to record it because, 
in my opinion, he behaved generously and even 
magnanimously. Commenting on some transaction 
of the day, I spoke with indignation of the treatment 
of Ireland by her stronger sister. Carlyle replied 
that if he must say the whole truth, it was his 
opinion that Ireland had brought all her misfor- 
tunes on herself. She had committed a great sin 
in refusing and resisting the Reformation. In 
England, and especially in Scotland, certain men 
who had grown altogether intolerant of the con- 
dition of the world, arose and swore that this thing 
should not continue though the earth and the devil 
united to uphold it, and their vehement protest 



224 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

was heard by the whole universe, and whatever 
had been done for human liberty from that time 
forth, in the English Commonwealth, in the French 
Revolution, and the like, was the product of this 
protest. It was a great sin for nations to darken 
their eyes against light hke this, and Ireland, which 
had persistently done so, was punished accordingly. 
It was hard to say how far England was blamable 
in trying by trenchant laws to compel her into the 
right course, till in latter times it was found the 
attempt was wholly useless, and then properly given 
up. He found, and any one might see who looked 
into the matter a httle, that countries had pros- 
pered or fallen into helpless ruin in exact proportion 
as they had helped or resisted this message. The 
most peaceful, hopeful nations in the world just now 
were the descendants of the men who had said 
" Away with all your trash ; we will believe in 
none of it ; we scorn your threats of damnation ; 
on the whole, we prefer going down to hell with a 
true story in our mouths to gaining heaven by any 
holy legerdemain." Ireland refused to believe and 
must take the consequences, one of which, he would 
venture to point out, was a population preter- 
naturally ignorant and lazy. 

I was very angry, as he knew my opinions on 
these points, and had no justification for a homily. 
I replied vehemently, that the upshot of his discourse 
was that Ireland was rightly trampled upon, and 
' plundered for three centuries, for not believing in 
the Thirty-nine Articles ; but did he believe in a tittle 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



225 



of them himself? If he did beheve them, what was 
the meaning of his exhortations to get rid of 
Hebrew old clothes, and put off Hebrew spectacles ? 
If he did not believe them, it seemed to me that he 
might, on his own showing, be trampled upon, and 
robbed as properly as Ireland for rejecting what 
he called the manifest truth. Queen Elizabeth, or 
her father, or any of the Englishmen or Scotchmen 
who rose for the deliverance of the world, and 
so forth, would have made as short work of him as 
they did of Popish recusants. Ireland was ignorant, 
he said, but did he take the trouble of con- 
sidering that for three generations to seek educa- 
tion was an offence strictly prohibited and sternly 
punished by law. Down to the time of the Reform 
Act, and the coming into power of the Reformers, 
the only education tendered to the Irish people 
was mixed with the soot of hypocrisy and pro- 
fanation. When I was a boy, in search of educa- 
tion, there was not in a whole province, where the 
successors of these English and Scotch prophets 
had had their own way, a single school for Catholic 
boys above the condition of a Poor School. My 
guardian had to determine whether I should do 
without education, or seek it in a Protestant school, 
where I was regarded as an intruder; not an 
agreeable experiment in the province of Ulster, I 
could assure him. This was what I, for my part, 
owed to these missionaries of light and civilisation. 
The Irish people were lazy, he said, taking no 
account of the fact that the fruits of their labour 

P 



226 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

were not protected by law, but left a prey to their 
landlords, who plundered them without shame or 
mercy. Peasants were not industrious under such 
conditions, nor would philosophers for that matter, 
I fancied. If the people of Ireland found the 
doctrines of the Reformation incredible three hun- 
dred years ago, why were they not as well entitled 
to reject them then as he was to reject them to- 
day ? In my opinion, they were better entitled. 
A nation which had been the school of the West, 
a people who had sent missionaries throughout 
Europe to win barbarous races to Christianity, who 
interpreted in its obvious sense God's promise to 
be always with His Church, suddenly heard that 
a king of unbridled and licentious passions under- 
took to modify the laws of God for his own 
convenience, and that his ministers and courtiers 
were bribed into acquiescence by the plunder of 
monasteries and churches; what wonder that they 
declared that they would die rather than be 
partners in such a transaction. It might be worth 
remembering that the pretensions of Anne Boleyn's 
husband to found a new religion, seemed as absurd 
and profane to those Irishmen as the similar pre- 
tensions of Joe Smith seemed to all of us at present. 
After all they had endured, the people of Ireland 
might compare with any in the world for the only 
virtues they were permitted to cultivate, piety, 
chastity, simplicity, hospitality to the stranger, 
fidelity to friends, and the magnanimity of self- 
sacrifice for truth and justice. When we were 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 227 

touring in Ireland together twenty years before, 
with the phenomena under our eyes, he himself 
declared that, after a trial of three centuries there 
was more vitality in Catholicism than in this 
saving light to which the people had blinded their 
eyes. 

Mrs. Carlyle and John Forster, who were present, 
looked at each other in consternation as if a catas- 
trophe was imminent; but Carlyle replied placidly, 
" that there was no great life, he apprehended, 
in either of these systems at present ; men looked 
to something quite different to that for their guid- 
ance just now." 

I could not refrain from returning to the subject. 
Countries which had refused to relinquish their 
faith were less prosperous, he insisted, than those 
who placidly followed the royal Reformers in 
Germany and England. Perhaps they were; but 
worldly prosperity was the last test I expected to 
hear him apply to the merits of a people. If this 
was to be a test, the Jews left the Reformers a long 
way in the rear. 

When nations were habitually peaceful and pros- 
perous, he replied it might be inferred that they 
dealt honestly with the rest of mankind, for this 
was the necessary basis of any prosperity that 
was not altogether ephemeral ; and as conduct was 
the fruit of conviction, it might be further inferred, 
with perfect safety, that they had had honest teach- 
ing, which was the manifest fact in the cases he 
specified. 



228 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

I was much heated, and I took myself off as soon 
as I could discreetly do so. The same evening, I 
met Carlyle at dinner at John Forster's. I sat 
beside him, and had a pleasant talk, and neither 
then, nor at any future time, did he resent my 
brusque criticism by the shghtest sign of displea- 
sure. This is a fact, I think, which a generous 
reader will recognise to be altogether incompatible 
with the recent estimate of Carlyle as a man of 
impatient temper, and arrogant overbearing self- 
will. 

Modern Art. 

As we passed one day the Albert Memorial going 
to Hyde Park, he spoke of the chaotic condition 
of art, like all the other intellectual pursuits. Eng- 
land had not been fortunate in expressing her ideas 
in this region more than any other, quite otherwise 
than fortunate indeed. Some one had compared 
the memorial to a wedding-cake with a gilded 
marionette mounted on it ; the effect produced was 
insignificant or altogether grotesque. The huge 
edifice called the New Palace of Westminster was 
not insignificant or grotesque, but it wanted the 
unity of design which is apt to impress one in a 
work which is a single birth from one competent 
mind. When Thackeray saw the river front he 
declared he saw no reason why it stopped : it ended 
nowhere, and might just as well have gone on to 
Chelsea. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 229 

I asked who was responsible for the disappoint- 
ing effect of the Albert Memorial. The person 
to be contented, he said, was the Queen. She lived 
in such an atmosphere of courtly exaggeration that 
she ceased to comprehend the true relation and 
proportion of things. Hence the tremendous out- 
cry over Prince Albert, who was in no respect a 
very remarkable man. He had had a certain prac- 
tical German sense in him too, which prevented 
him from running counter to the feelings of the 
English people, but that was all. He was very 
ill-liked among the aristocracy who came into per- 
sonal relations with him. Queen Victoria had a 
preternaturally good time of it with the English 
people, owing a good deal to reaction from the 
hatred which George IV. had excited. Her son, 
one might fear, would pay the penalty in a stormy 
and perilous reign. He gave no promise of being 
a man fit to perform the tremendous task appointed 
him to do, and indeed one looked in vain anywhere 
just now for the man who would lead England 
back to better ways than she had fallen into in 
our time. 

Speaking of the relations of Ireland and Scotland, 
he said Scotia Major and Scotia Minor owed each 
other mutual services, running back to the dawn of 
history. Scotland sent St. Patrick to civilise the 
western isle, and in good time the western isle 
sent Columbkille and other spiritual descendants 
of St. Patrick to teach the Scottish Celts their 
duties towards the Eternal Ruler and His laws. 



230 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

I said it was disputed whether Scotland had sent 
St. Patrick to Ireland ; a friend of mine, Mr. Cashel 
Hoey, had recently written a paper to demonstrate 
that St. Patrick was a Frenchman. 

A Frenchman I he echoed ; what strain of human 
perversity could induce an Irishman to desire to 
see it admitted that St, Patrick was a French- 
man ? I laughed, and replied that the object 
probably was to relieve him from the reproach of 
being a Scotchman. 

Well, he said, in a bantering tone, we might 
rely it was a controversy in no respect likely to 
arise about any other Irish personage, whether he 
was a Scotchman. 

I was in Ireland when the news reached me of 
Mrs. Carlyle's sudden death. There was none 
of her sex outside my own immediate kith and 
kin whose loss would have touched me so nearly. 
I had known her for thirty years, always gracious 
and cheerful, even when physical pain or social 
trouble disturbed her tranquillity. She was per- 
haps easily troubled, for she was of the sensitive 
natures who expect more from life than it commonly 
yields. I verily believe her married life was as 
serene, sympathetic, and satisfying as those of 
ninety-nine out of a hundred of the exceptionally 
endowed classes who constitute Society. The 
greatly gifted are rarely content; they anticipate 
and desire something beyond their experience, 
and find troubles where to robuster natures there 
would be none. There was an incident connected 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 231 

with her death which has always struck me as 
pecuharly tragic. When the news reached her 
husband by telegram, fresh from his election as 
Rector of the University of Edinburgh, he retired 
into absolute privacy, but his letters were brought 
to him next morning, and among them was one 
from her whom he knew to be dead, full of triumph 
at his success, and of lively speculations on the 
future. 

When I saw Carlyle again, some weeks after her 
funeral, I found him composed, and at times even 
cheerful. His fresh mourning, a deep folding collar, 
and other puritanical abundance of snowy linen 
crowned with a head of silver grey, became him, 
and gave I a stranger the impression of a noble 
and venerable old man. There is a photograph 
engraved with some of the memorials of him, which 
exhibits a man plunged in gloomy reverie, which 
did not resemble him even at that painful era, 
and is a caricature of the ordinary man. The 
photographer caught him doubtless in some fit of 
dyspepsia, and obtained quite an exceptional result. 
Before his great trouble, and even afterwards, his 
manner was composed and cheerful, and in earlier 
times no one was readier to indulge in badinage and 
banter; a smile was much more familiar to his face 
than a frown or a cloud. 

When I returned to Australia, the correspondence 
recommenced. The pains Carlyle took to recom- 
mend for employment young men whom he was 
never likely to see in the world again reveals the 



232 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

true nature of the man, generous, considerate, and 
sympathetic. 

"Chelsea, March i, 1868. 
"Dear Duffy, — Many thanks for your kind- 
ness to R ■ on his arrival ; it is a full honouring 

of the bill I drew on you in that respect ; and 
whatever more ensues shall rest with yourself only, 
and your own discernment of the facts, not mine 
any further. That was a very awkward and pro- 
voking blunder, doubtless, that about the news- 
paper; but I ought to tell you withal that I believe 
it proceeded altogether from ignorance and irresolu- 
tion in the matter ; and that * pride ' had no share 
in it at any stage. The poor fellow, at our first 
meeting, cautiously told me he was busy night and 
day writing 'a novel,' and had the better half of 
it done, lodging the while with some charitable 
comrade. ' Literature ' on those terms, versus 
Famine, his one alternative. You may guess what 
approval this project met with from me. * Better 
die,' I said, with denunciation of * Literature ' so 
called, especially of newspaper work and its raging 
blackguardisms (as here in London), the wages of 
which, however high, I pronounced to be Bedlam 
and Gehenna, worse almost than all other wages of 
sin ! At our second meeting, after some weeks of 

consideration, R gratified me much by the 

report that he had now (' last night,' if I remember) 
hiirnt out of the world his ' novel ' and all that held 
of it, and was wholly resolute now for a life of 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 233 

silent ivorking as the real crown for him. This 
will have been, this and not 'pride,' his reason for 
rejecting your kind offer in that department ; then 
soon after he will have repented (would have helped 
for the moment though) been ashamed to trouble 
you again on it, tried to help himself by the direct 
course, and so have gone into the quagmire, on 
ground he knew nothing of! Let him have the 
benefit of this hypothesis, if you can, as I think; 
and that is all I will say or expect on the matter. 

"You say nothing of yourself or of your big 
Australian world, on both which points, especially 
the former, you might have expected a willing 
listener surely. I do not even know clearly whether 
you are in office again or not. A returned emigrant 
(newspaper editor, I think, but certainly a sensible 
and credible kind of man) gave me very discourag- 
ing accounts not long since of the state of immi- 
gration among you. ' Next to no immigration at 
all,' reports he ; ' the excellent Duffy Land Lazu, 
made of even no effect ' by scandalous ' auctioneer- 
ing jobbers ' and other vulpine combinations and 
creatures, whose modes and procedures I did not 
well understand. But the news itself was to me 
extremely bad. For the roaring anarchies of 
America itself, and of all our incipient 'Americas,' 
justify themselves to me by this one plea, 'Angry 
sir, we couldn't help it : and we anarchies, and all 
(as you may see) are conquering the wilderness, as 
perhaps your Friedrich William, or Friedrich him- 
self, could not have guided us to do, and are 



234 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

offering homes and arable communion with mother 
earth and her blessed verities to all the anarchies 
of the world which have quite lost their way.' 
Australia, of a certainty, ought to leave her gates 
wide open in this respect at all times ; nay, it were 
well for her could she build a free bridge (' flying 
bridge') between Europe and her, and encourage 
the deserving to stream across. I pray you, if ever 
the opportunity offer, do your very best in this 
interest, and consider it as, silently or vocally, of 
the very essence of your function (appointed you by 
Heaven itself) in that Antipodal world ! And excuse 
this little bit of preaching, for it is meant altogether 
honestly and well. 

" What you say of Vichy and dyspepsia is welcome 
in two respects, first as it reminds me how kind 
and careful you always are about whatever is im- 
portant to my now considerably unimportant self; 
and, secondly, as indicating, which is your one point 
of personal news, that the salutary effects of Vichy 
are still evident in you, and that your health (pro- 
bably) is rather good. Long may that continue, 
and honourable may be the work you do in virtue 
of it while the days still are ! As to myself, I know 
sadly, at all moments, dyspepsia to be the fright- 
fullest fiend that is in the pit, or out of it ; the 
accursed brutal nightmare that has ridden me con- 
tinually these fifty odd years, preaching its truth 
gospel (v/ould I had listened to it, which I would 
not), but, alas ! as to any ' cure ' for it, the patient 
is too old; the patient has it in the blood, in the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 235 

nerves and brain of him as well ; and has no cure 
of the least likelihood, except the indubitable cure 
which is now near ahead. Last year about this 
time I understood myself to be within some fifty 
or eighty miles of Vichy at one point of my rail- 
way; and I had before made some inquiries and 
speculations with my brother and others (well re- 
membering what you had said to me on the sub- 
ject) ; but the result was, I considered the probable 
misery and botheration fairly to surpass any chance 
of profit to one in my case, and left Vichy lying 
silent in the muddy darkness (Lyon, to judge of 
it by night, an uglier chaotic vortex than even 
Manchester or Glasgow), all the ten or eight wells 
of Vichy, too populous, quack-governed (I was 
told), confused and noisy, to be of real service. I 
do not know that I have grown better in health 
since I saw you, but neither have I grown percep- 
tibly worse. Alas ! I have ' health ' enough (it must 
be owned) for any work I have now the keart to 
do; it is heart and interest that fail me, v/ere all 
else right. 

''We are in a mighty fry about ' education ' just 
now, and about many other recipes for our late 
grand ' leap in the dark,' in none of which have I 
any faith to speak of. Fenianisin has gone to 
sleep, more power to it (in that direction) ! John 
Mill has issued a strange recipe for Ireland : to 
oust all the Irish landlords, and make all the Irish 
tenants Hindoo ryots. I did not read much of 
his pamphlet, but it seemed to me (though of the 



236 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

clearest expression and most perspicuous logic) to 
be still weaker and more irrational than his poor 
treatise on aristocracy, so famous among certain 
fellow-creatures in this epoch. Adieu, dear Duffy ; 
write me a long letter if you would do me a pleasure 
at any time. — Yours ever, T. Carlyle. 

"John Forster has had a good deal of sickness 
(bronchitis, &c.) this season, and has always rather 
an excess of work. My kind remembrances to 
Mrs. Duffy ; and best regards to her amiable sister, 
whose note, &c., I got, regretting only that the 
occasion furnished her so many stupid blunders to 
report withal." 

" Chelsea, December 19, 1868. 

" Dear Duffy, — Above a week ago your letter 

reached me ; a glad arrival, as all your letters are, 

communicating various bits of intelligence which 

are of interest here. What you report about 

R agrees very well with the rough outline I 

had formed of him, from physiognomy and a little 
talk chiefly ; an Oxford youth of fair faculty, of 
honest enough intentions too, but as yet of Httle 
real insight into the world or himself, who might be 
liable to fail from want of discernment, want of 
prudence, patience, and dexterity, but not much 
from any worse or deeper want, as accordingly it 
geems to have proved. Happily he has now got 
settled on a reasonably good basis, where we hope 
he will continue, and develop himself — and that 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 237 

both of 2is two have done with him and his affairs. 
To you, for my sake, he has cost something ; to me 
not much, beyond a httle trouble ; and if we have 
saved a man from London newspaper reportage, and 
wreck in the lowest gutters, into useful teaching of 
languages in Tasmania, neither of us will grudge 

the bit of help we gave. From R himself I 

have had no word since his last thank you at this 
door, which is a symptom I rather approve in him, 
and certainly wish to continue, for my own share 
of it. ' Silence is golden,' now and then, rather ! 

That of ' losing a year and half of your time and 
life,' in the fruitless attempt to sound Colonial and 
British anarchy, is not so good ! But I suppose 
you had it to do, by way of satisfying your own 
mind and conscience ; and I don't wonder you 
found no bottom, for in fact there is none. I, non- 
official, have long ceased making any inquiry into 
these things ; chaos is as big as cosmos, one feels 
(or indeed infinitely bigger), and distinguishes itself 
moreover by having no centre ; give chaos your 
malison and leave it alone ! That thrice disgusting 
Governor Darling matter, I have always skipt away 
from, when it turned up in the newspapers, as from 
extensive carrion in the liveliest state of decomposi- 
tion — most malodorously pointing out to me the 
state of both the Downing Streets, yours and ours. 
Ours, you may depend upon it, has no tyrannous 
intention of ' governing the antipodes ' or of govern- 
ing or encountering it at all, except to keep its own 
poor skin out of trouble, and be a conspicuously float- 



238 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ing dead dog amid the general universe of such. 
That is very certain to me. What your Downing 
Street, with its appendages, democracies, &c. &c., 
are, I hope you will thoroughly explain in one of 
those new books you are meditating; do, there 
is no usefuller or worthier employment could be 
cut- out for a thinking and seeing man who has 
had Australia under his eyes till he comprehends 
it. In the name of manhood and honesty, and 
as a precept to you essentially out of heaven, re- 
gard that as your duty. About a year ago I read 
in the Wesimmster Review (by a man whom I 
have seen and believe) such an account of Australian 
Government, &c. &c., as refuses ever to go out of 
mind again ; that, especially, of no emigrants arriv- 
ing, of its being the wish and policy that none 
should arrive, fairly takes away one's breath ; chal- 
lenges the universe to produce its fellow in mal- 
government, ancient or modern, on this afQicted 
earth ! I entreat you go down to the bottom of 
all that ; and let any clear-minded man understand 
how it is and what and why. 

" A visitor (not over welcome) staggers in ; I am 
driven to this scrap of bare paper as the readiest 
to hand, for the pretext obliged me to conclude 
abruptly. You see with what mutinous reluct- 
ance my poor right hand writes at all; has been 
liable to shake of late years (left hand still 
steady). 

" I am very sad of soul, but not therefore to be 
called miserable ; nor am I quite idle, working 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 239 

rather what I can, in ways that you would not 
disapprove of. That you have the intention to 
come home is good, very good — and bring your 
two books with you. These, I really think, might 
help against this * millennium ' of the devil with 
the chains struck off /iv/i. I will believe it of 
you to the last. 

" * In six years ' it seems to me extremely un- 
certain (and doubtful of advantage, if it were not) 
whether you will find 7ne still waiting here to receive 
you ; but, if you do, you can be sure of a welcome 
from an old man's heart. 

"Adieu, dear Duffy; I am forced to fling down 
pen and get out into the air. 

" Forster is complaining a good deal — not dan- 
gerously. Recommend me to Mrs. Callan at the 
distance of St. Petersburg. — " Yours, always truly, 

" T. Carlyle." 



The reference to St. Petersburg alludes to my 
answer to some former message to be delivered 
personally, when I bade him look at the map, 
and he would see that I was further from Mrs. 
Callan, then in Queensland, than he was from St. 
Petersburg. 

He was now engaged in collecting Mrs. Carlyle's 
letters for publication, and his friend, John Forster, 
communicated to me his wishes to have her corres- 
pondence with me returned. 



240 THOMAS CARLYLE. 



" Palace Gate House, 

Kensington, London, 
January 25, 1870. 

" My DEAR DUP'FY, — We send you many most 
kind wishes from this place for all happiness in 
this New Year, and in all the coming ones (to you 
and yours). Carlyle and Browning dined with 
us on Christmas day, and you were, I can assure 
you, ' very freshly remembered ' by us all. Much 
interested were we by your last letter to me, and 
its interruption. You recollect who it was that 
laid down his pen, being ' interrupted by so great 
an experiment as dying.' Here was happily an 
experiment of the other — the creative sort, which 
we hope you will live triumphantly to complete, 
with the highest availant cast of characters. Carlyle 
sends most special message to you, which, indeed, 
he would write himself, but that the condition of 
his right hand almost wholly disquaHfies him from 
writing. It is only in an absolute extremity he 
now ever makes the attempt, and it pains me (so 
terribly does the hand shake) to see him strive to 
lift a glass with it. Fortunately, the left hand is 
not affected. Well, his message is to say that any 
notes of poor dear Mrs. Carlyle that you may have, 
and that you are not indisposed to send him, he 
will most gladly and gratefully receive from you. 

If you should send anj^, I will ask you kindly to 
mark on them the date, or approximate date, as 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 241 

far as may be. I meant to have written you a 
much longer letter, but I am writing under dis- 
advantages. Immediately after Christmas day, I 
went down to Torquay to stay with Lord Lytton 
(who has a house there), most unfortunately caught 
cold, and was laid up with illness nearly all the 
time we were there. We returned only on Satur- 
day last. I am still very ailing; and, amid much 
arrears of work, I am with difficulty getting this 
done. I then suddenly remembered ' the 26th.' 
Carlyle, who dined with us the day after our 
return, had not forgotten to ask me whether his 
message was gone. I wish you'd send us a paper 
when the other change, that will put you in your 
proper place, approaches more nearly, for the 
Times' correspondent is very misleading. And, 
further, I wish you to tell me how parcels are best 
sent to you — whether there is any special agency 
that is swiftest, safest, and cheapest ? We are 
not in the most hopeful political condition here, 
very few of us believing that Gladstone has by any 
means yet got to the bottom of the Irish secret. 

My wife tenderly remembers all your kindness, 
and much desires that the regards she sends, and in 
which I heartily join, might be permitted to extend 
to Mrs. Duffy also. I have had such pleasant 
experience formerly of your habit of returning 
good for ill in the matter of letter writing, that I 
dare to hope you may forgive what I am now 
writing, and make liberal return to me of what I 
find such real and great pleasure in having from 

Q 



242 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

yon, that I am almost impudent enough to think 
myself entitled to it. Good-bye, my dear Duffy. — 
I am, ever yours, JOHN FORSTER." 



The following letter was in the handwriting of a 
lady, and from this time forth Carlyle either dictated 
his letters, or got a friend to write in his place, 
the process of engraving on lead (so he described 
the operation later) being past human patience : — 

" 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
December 12, 1871. 
" Dear Duffy, — A good many weeks ago I 
had your friendly and cheerful little note, which 
was very welcome to me after the long silence. 
It has lain on my table ever since, daily soliciting 
some answer, and, strange to say, daily in vain. 
Truth is, my own right hand having grown entirely 
useless to me for writing, the business is altogether 
disagreeable, and even in the old sense, impos- 
sible (for ' dictation,' do what I will, never rightly 
prospers); and the indolence and torpor, now 
grown habitual, especially in these heavy, dark 
November and December days, with their fogs and 
fitful frosts, deter me altogether from answering 
any letter, except under actual compulsion of the 
hour. Tantum. mutaius ab illo ! I also had 
safely delivered by the postman your copy of 
' Homes in the Land of Plenty,' recognisable as 
yours by the handwriting outside, which also was 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 243 

kindly welcome to me. I already had a copy from 
the author, and had read most part of it ; but this 
I sent to the Chelsea Library for behoof of my 
fellow-citizens, and have put yours, as naturally 
worthier, in its stead. Another paper, excellently 
written and conceived, concerning the association 
of all your Australian colonies into one, I also 
received and read with approval and good wishes 
at the time you intended.^ For all these things 
accept my hearty thanks in the lump ; and pardon 
me for loitering so long with that poor return. 

" It gives me real pleasure to find you again in 
office, and ruling, so far as any rule is possible, 
what geographically we may call one of the largest 
empires (for your colony is clearly the presiding 
one) that is to be found on the face of the earth. 
I rejoice also to hear that your Ministry succeeds, 
or was succeeding when we last heard. The ideas 
you had upon it, so far as I could gather, were 
sound and good, and deserved success. One thing 
I always earnestly wish, in reference to Australia 
and its progress, that you and Mother-Country 
could contrive some way to have ten times as much 
emigration. For fifty years the possibility of this, 
and the immensely beneficial effects of it (especially 
for us), have hung before my mind as certainties, 
even as axioms, evident hke those of Euclid, the 
total neglect of which, in the face of such circum- 
stances as ours, are now plainly becoming, has often 

1 A report of a Royal Commission, of which I was chairman, 
on the Federation of the Australian Colonies. 



244 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

filled me, and yet fills, whenever I think of it (which 
is now seldomer), with astonishment, impatience, 
and even indignation. 'Administrative Nihilism,' as 
Huxley calls it, that is the explanation ; and, alas, 
what Huxley does not say or quite see. Nihilism 
of that kind is precisely the apple that grows and 
must grow upon every Parliamentary tree in our 
day. This I at least perceive; and it quiets me 
on many a grievance. A government carried on by 
Parliamentary palaver and universal suffrage, with 
penny newspapers presiding, must necessarily be a 
do-nothingism, and neglect not only its colonies, 
but every other interest, temporal and eternal, except 
that of getting majorities for itself by hook or by 
crook. If on these terms we can consider it the 
best of all kinds of government, we are free to do 
so ; but the consequences are, have been, and will be 
' Nihilism,' as above said by Huxley, nay minimism 
(as I could say) to an ever more frightful, ruinous, 
detestable, and even damnable, extent; the ulti- 
matum of which is petroleum and what we have 
seen in Paris not so long ago ! In spite of all this, 
I still privately hope there is patriot honesty and 
probity enough on both sides of the ocean not to 
let the immense and noble interest sink to the sea 
bottom, but to save it as probably the very greatest 
that ever was entrusted to the guidance of a nation. 
Enough, oh, far too much of this ; what have I to do 
'with it more ? 

"Your friend Forster has been here since I 
began this letter. He is still busy and unwearied. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 245 

though laden with a great burden of almost per- 
petual ill-health, especially in winter time. . He has 
just been some weeks on the southern coast taking 
his holidays there. He looks really a little stronger, 
and will front under better omens the three months' 
service that still remains to him. Were April the 

5th once here, F can claim his pension; and 

will without a day's delay give the matter up. I 
do hope, and indeed expect, he will be able to 
achieve this without further permanent damage ; 
and then there is plain sailing, so far as one can 
see, and nothing worse. The whole world is, in 

these very days and weeks, full of F and his 

* Life of Dickens,' for which there is a perfect rage 
or public famine (copies not to be supplied fast 
enough). I should think it likely there is a copy 
on the sea for you too, and that you will read it 
with interest and satisfaction two or three months 
hence, in some holiday you may have. It is curious, 
and in part surprising ; yields a true view of Dickens 
(great part of it being even of his own writing) ; only 
one volume of it, the second not to be begun till 
after the above-mentioned April 5th. Me nothing 
in it so surprises as these two American explo- 
sions around poor Dickens, all Yankee-doodle-dom, 
blazing up like one universal soda-water bottle 
round so very measurable ' a phenomenon, this and 
the way the phenomenon takes it, was curiously 
and even genially interesting to me, and significant 
of Yankee-doodle-dom. Volume first ends with a 
soda-water explosion, which we may reckon genially 



246 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

comic ; volume second will end with a ditto, which 
has a dark death's head in it, and which has always 
seemed to me very tragic and very mournful. 

"With regard to myself, there is almost nothing 
to be said that you do not already know. A week 
ago yesterday I entered on my seventy-seventh 
year. I am not worse in health than that means, 
nor can I brag of being much better. I do retain 
nearly complete soundness of organ, but the strength 
of everything is inevitably lessening every day; 
the son of Adam had to die, and if, like a tree, 
it is to be by the aid of time alone, one knows 
not whether that is not, perhaps, within certain 
limits, the less desirable way. But we have no 
choice left in the matter, and are surely bound 
to be thankful to be left on any tolerable terms in 
the Land of the Living and the Place of Hope. 
You ask me what I am doing, dear Duffy; I am 
verily doing nothing. Knotting up some thrumbs 
of my life's web, gazing with more and more 
earnestness, and generally with love and tenderness 
rather than any worse feeling, into the eternity 
which can now be only a few steps ahead. I 
avoid all company except that of one or two close 
friends. Last winter I read most of my Goethe 
over again ; reading a good book is, in fact, my 
most favourite employment. Even an intelligent 
book, by an honest-hearted man, is tolerable to me, 
and my best way of spending the evening. Adieu, 
dear friend, you see there is not a speck more of 
room. — Ever yours truly, T. Carlyle." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 247 

The next letter was written under circumstances 
of painful difficulty. His right hand had become 
practically useless. It was only with a lead pencil, 
and by the slow laborious method he describes, 
that he was able to write at all. But I had become 
Prime Minister at that time, and he would not 
omit sending his good wishes under his own hand. 
I rejoice in these multiplied evidences of the genuine 
kindness of a man who has been so differently 
pictured by ignorance and prejudice. 



" Chelsea, London, May 28, 1872. 
" Dear Duffy, — About ten days ago I received 
the report of speech, the newspaper with your por- 
trait and sketch of Biography, &c. &c., all of which, 
especially the first-named article, were very welcome 
and interesting. The portrait is not very like, 
though it has some honest likeness ; but in the 
speech I found a real image of your best self, and 
of the excellent career you are entering upon, which 
pleased and gratified me very much. Though un- 
able to write, except with a pencil, and at a speed 
as of engraving (upon lead or the like), I cannot 
forbear sending you my hearty Euge, euge, and 
earnestly encouraging you to speed along, and 
improve the * shining hours ' all you can while it 
lasts. Few British men have such a bit of work 
on hand. You seem to me to be, in some real 
degree, modelling the first elements of mighty 
nations over yonder, scattering beneficent seeds, 



248 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

which may grow to forests, and be green for a 
thousand years. Stand to your work hero-like, the 
utmost you can ; be wise, be diligent, patient, faith- 
ful ; a man, in that case, has his reward. I can only 
send you my poor wishes, but then these veritably 
are sorry only that they are worth so little. 

"Nothing in your list of projects raises any 
scruple in me; good, human and desirable we felt 
them all to be, except that of gold mining only. 
And this too, I felt at once was, if not human, or 
to all men's profit, yet clearly colonial, and to 
Victoria's profit, and therefore inevitable in your 
season. But I often reflect on this strange fact, 
as, perhaps, you yourself have done, that he who 
anywhere, in these ages, digs up a gold nugget 
from the ground, is far inferior in beneficence to 
him who digs up a mealy potato — nay is, in strict 
language, a malefactor to all his brethren of man- 
kind, having actually to pick the purse of every son 
of Adam for what money he, the digger, gets for 
his nugget, and be bothered to it. I do not insist 
on this, I only leave it with you, and wonder silently 
at the ways of all-wise Providence with highly 
foolish man in this poor course of his. 

"Adieu, dear Duffy, I have written more than 
enough. If I had a free pen, how many things 
could I still write ; but perhaps it is better not ! 
I am grown very old, and though . without specific 
ailment of body, very weak (in comparison), and 
fitter to be silent about what I am thinking of than 
to speak. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 249 

"I send my kind and faithful remembrance to 
Mrs. Callan. John, my brother, is gone to Vichy 
again (day before yesterday); Forster is looking 
up again, now that the collar is off his neck. Good- 
bye with you all. — Ever truly yours, 

"T. Carlyle." 



Of a brief visit to Europe in 1 874, I find almost 
no record regarding Carlyle, but a letter from John 
Forster (who was already stricken by the illness of 
which he shortly died), full of the overflowing kind- 
ness of his genial nature. 

" Palace Gate House, Kensington, W., 
Jtme 27, 1874. 

"My dear Duffy,— I shall be heartily glad 
to see you again, and so will my wife, who does 
not forget your kindness to her. 

" Alas ! that there should be such differences 
between what we seem and what we are. My 
health is completely broken. I cannot speak of it. 
Carlyle, whom you are to see to-morrow, as I hear, 
will tell you something of it. 

" I am going to Knebworth for ten days or so, 
and might find myself unable to go to you before 
I leave, which will be, I think, on Monday. But 
if you change your address in that interval, you 
will kindly tell me. 

" I sent a letter by a mail to Melbourne, too recent, 
I suppose, to have reached you before you quitted 



250 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

for England. Illness alone had prevented my writ- 
ing earlier — the third volume [of his * Life of 
Charles Dickens '] had preceded my letter. 

" In the last I referred to your visit in regard to 
the Athenaeum, when I do not think there will be 
any doubt of your election by the committee. 
Froude, with whom I spoke of it yesterday, is of 
the same opinion. 

"With all best wishes and kindest regards from 
us both here, ever, my dear Duffy, most sincerely 
yours, John Forster." 



I ought perhaps to say that I did not desire 
the honour which my friend contemplated for me, 
because I determined, whenever I returned finally to 
Europe, not to reside in England, and was unwilling 
to incur the expense of a club I could not probably 
visit once in a year. At a later period the proposal 
was renewed by Mr. W. E. Forster, in concert with 
Lord Carnarvon and Lord O'Hagan (then members 
of the Committee) ; but I was more convenienced 
by the compliment graciously conferred on me by 
the Committee of a month's honorary membership, on 
three separate occasions, when I remained for that 
period in London. 

After my return to Australia I had but one letter 
from Carlyle before my final removal to Europe. 
Like many recent ones, it was devoted to the 
general purpose of serving a young man whom 
he thought deserving, or, at any rate, in much need 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 251 

of help. When we find a man of eighty, who is 
done with the chief interests of hfe, employing his 
remaining strength to serve a struggling fellow 
creature whom he has never seen and can never 
hope to see, we have safe data, I think, for deter- 
mining the nature and disposition of this old man. 



" 5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, S.W., 
Dec. 30, 1876. 

" Dear Duffy, — Till the arrival, about a week 

ago, of the Melbourne RevieWy with your article, 

addressed to me, which was very welcome, both as 

personal memento, and also as a bit of pretty enough 

reading, I had seen no trace of you, nor heard 

any rumour of news. Singularly enough, within 

the last three days, I have received from Melbourne, 

from a poor neighbour of yours there, a feeble but 

pathetic request, which, on reading it, I decided to 

send you, with two enclosures that were in it, 

which are now by mistake burnt, in hopes you 

might be able to do something for the unfortunate 

writer who has thus sent his message to you, 

written within a stone's throw of your own door, 

but obliged to go round the world before it could get 

entrance ! Pray, for my sake, read with attention ; 

understand, too, that the bits of mildly satirical 

verse, once printed in the M elboiu'ne Pzinck, were 

not without some decided indications of a superior 

talent that way. These unhappily are burnt, and 

you must take my word for them. The poor 



252 THOMAS CARLYLE, 

creature's letter, as you will observe, expresses a 
kind of feeble hope that you, by some way or 
another, might find some employment for him to 
supplement his miserable ;^40 a year — if you had 
been in office, and if he, poor wretch, had not been 
on the free trade side of politics ! 

"The thing I do desire of you, dear Duffy, is 
that you would see this poor deformed creature, 
and examine him with your own eyes, and in right 
and brotherly pity and desire to help. To me it 
would give a real pleasure if you could in any 
way help him. And that is all my message ; and 
so I leave it in your hands. 

" Of myself I have only to say that, being now 
in my 82nd year, I feel more completely invalided 
than ever before, and have no strength left for 
work of any kind. But, except languor and lazi- 
ness, I feel no decay of spiritual faculty; and I 
have in the late months read with enjoyment the 
whole of Shakespeare, and am now reading, still 
with a kind of real enjoyment and wonder, 
Brumoy's 'Theatre des Grecs,' of which I have 
finished prosperously about the fourth part. Adieu, 
dear Duffy; may good ever be with you, and the 
blessing of an old friend, if that be of any value. — 
Yours, ever truly, T. Carlyle." 



My final return to Europe took place in i! 
I arrived in London in the spring, and immediately 
visited Carlyle. It was deeply touching to see the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 253 

Titan, who had never known languor or weakness, 
suffering from the dilapidations of old age. His 
right hand was nearly useless, and had to be 
supported by the left when he lifted it by a 
painful effort to his mouth. His talk was subdued 
in tone, but otherwise unaltered. It takes a long 
time to die, he said, with his old smile, and a gleam 
of humour in his eye. He was wrapped in a frieze 
dressing-gown, and for the first time wore a cap ; 
but, though he was feeble, his face had not lost 
its character of power or authority. He was well 
enough, he declared, except from the effects of 
decay, which were rarely beautiful to see. His 
chief trouble was to be so inordinately long in 
departing. It was sad to have survived early 
friends, and the power of work. Up to seventy 
he had lost none of his faculties, but when his 
hand failed that loss entailed others. He could not 
dictate with satisfaction. He found, when he dic- 
tated, the words were about three times as many 
as he would employ propria inami. Composition 
was in fact a process which a man was accustomed 
to perform in private, and which could not be 
effectually performed in the presence of any person 
whatever. But he had written more than enough. 
If anybody wanted to know his opinions, they were 
not concealed. There were still subjects on which 
he had perhaps something to say, and could say 
it, for though he was suffering an euthanasia from 
the gradual decay of the machine, the mind was 
probably much as it used to be ; but he was content 



254 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

to consider his work at an end. In looking back 
over his turbid and obstructed life, he saw only 
too well that he had scattered much seed by the 
wayside, which was as good as lost, leaving no 
visible issue behind. If it was sound vitalised seed 
it might perhaps spring up and blossom after many 
years; if not, in Heaven's name, let it rot. But 
much had been left altogether unspoken, because 
there was no fit audience discernible as yet, and 
a man's thoughts, though struggling for utterance, 
refused to utter themselves to the empty air. The 
discipline of delay and impediment, of which he 
had had considerable experience, was not, on the 
whole, a hostile element to labour in. In his later 
life he had some share of what men call prosperity ; 
but, alas, it might well be doubted, if for him and 
for all men, trouble and trial were not a wholesomer 
condition than ease and prosperity. 

After a time he seemed anxious to quit the 
subject of himself, and spoke of general topics. 
He asked me if I had visited the National Portrait 
Gallery, which he had done something to promote. 
He was confident it would prove a school of history 
for many who had no leisure for regular study of 
any kind. 

I said I had visited it several times, and with 
much satisfaction. It would prove a school of 
history, no doubt, but it was a school in which 
the pupils would get a good deal disillusiones. 
What would they say to Lord Bacon looking as 
jolly and degage as the burlesque personage who 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



255 



used to be known in London as Chief Baron 
Nicholson, or Queen Elizabeth as flaunting and 
overdressed as a milliner's lay figure in the 
Borough, or, in our own times, Charles Lamb 
transformed into an Itahan nobleman by Hazlitt, 
or Leigh Hunt into a Venetian bravo by Haydon ? 
One of the modestest of Enghsh worthies might 
recall the Dutch ambassador's bull about a col- 
league whom he described as strutting about with 
his arms akimbo — like a peacock ! I told him, a 
propos of historical memorials, that I had been 
recently in Paris, and visited Robespierre's house 
in the Rue St. Honore, where the iron stairs which 
he had so often trodden were still in existence in 
the gloomy and now dilapidated house where he 
resided in the heat of the Terror. 

It was from such seemingly insignificant frag- 
ments, he said, that history had to reconstruct 
the past, or some resemblance of it more or 
less credible, an operation rarely performed with 
success. 

He walked no longer as of old, but he appointed 
an early day for me to share his customary drive 
from three o'clock to five. He was accompanied 
by his niece,^ whose care was now essential to his 
comfort. We drove to Streatham, through Clapham 
Common, and home by Battersea Park. Carlyle 
talked of things which the localities suggested. He 
spoke much as usual, except that his voice was 

^ Mrs. Carlyle's niece, and by marriage with his nephew, Mr. 
Carlyle's niece also. 



256 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

feeble, and was so drowned by the noise of the 
road that I had to guess painfully at his meaning 
which used to be delivered with such clearness and 
vigour. I answered to what I was able to hear. 
He took occasional sips of brandy to keep up his 
strength, and solaced himself with a pipe. 

I did not see him again before leaving London, 
and in the spring of the ensuing year the summons 
to his funeral, which followed me to the south of 
France, only reached me when the body was already 
on its way to Scotland. Time had brought to a 
close, not prematurely, but with many forewarn- 
ings, a friendship which nothing had disturbed, 
and which was one of the chief comforts of my 
hfe. 

As these papers were published to present a 
more faithful portrait of Carlyle than the one com- 
monly received, I intended to finish them with a 
rapid survey of the chief misapprehensions current 
in later years about the Chelsea household ; but 
they have run to an unexpected length, and I prefer 
to postpone to another time and place this purpose, 
which is by no means relinquished. 



INDEX. 



Albert, Prince, 195 

Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 229 

Albert Memorial, 228, 229 

Americans and Carlyle, 181-184 

Art, Modern, 228, 229 

AthencEU7n, the, 90 

Athenaeum Club, 250 

" Aurora Leigh," Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning's, 62, 63 

Australia, Duffy in, 201-214, 231-236; 
250-252 ; free trade in, 218 ; federa- 
tion of colonies, 243 

Bailey, author of " Festus," loi, 102 

Barrett, Miss, 5, 58 

Barry, Michael J. , 109 

Beecher, Sir William, and Lady, 98, 99 

Belfast, 22 

" Bells and Pomegranates," Brown- 
ing's, 56, 57 

Bessborough, Lord, 41 

Blackwood' s Magazine, 66 

Bolivar, 65 

Books, Thackeray and, 195; Carlyle 
and, 221 

Books on Ireland, 35 

Boroihme, Bryan, 102, 103 

Boswell, J., 68, 69 

Bourke, Dean, 119 

Bright, John, 171, 190, 218 

Browning, Robert, 56-63, 2^0 

Buckle, H. T. (" History of Civilisation 
in England"), 107-109 

BuUer, Charles, 76, 79 

Burke, Edmund, 53, 114, 197, 198 

Butler, Edward, 112 

Butt, Isaac, 46, 145 



Caledonian Railway, 20 

Callan, Mrs., 37, 202 

Cane, Dr. , 71-73, 163 

Carleton, William, 63, 64 

Carlisle, Richard (publisher), 115 

Carlyle, John, 249 

Carlyle, Thomas, first acquaintance 
with, 1-4; handwriting of, II ; first 
visit to Ireland, 15-22 ; and W. E. 
Forster, 23 - 27 ; Sir G. Dufty's 
marriage, 28-30 ; second visit to 
Ireland, 30-50 ; in 1849, 46-49 ; 
manner of, 51 ; talks with, 52, 53, 
215-221 (see also " Conversations ") 
and poetry, 57 ; and pipes, 69, 70, 
124 ; method of work, 92, 93 ; the 
Chelsea philosophy, 105-107 ; and 
strikes, iir, 112; Scotch accent of, 
116; and the Irish problem, 120, 
158-162, 171-174 ; and Irish songs, 
146; article, "Trees of Liberty," 
in Nation, 145-150; "Latter-Day 
Pamphlets," 151-157; and Godless 
colleges, 164, 165; and J. S. Mill, 
166-171 ; Dr. Murray and, 175- 
178 ; and Disraeli, 179, 180 ; and 
Irish Americans, 181-183 ; kind- 
ness of, 187-190 ; and Thackeray, 
192-196; and reform, 196-198; at 
Malvern, 199, 200 ; and Macready, 
203-210 ; and Sir H. Parkes, 210- 
214 ; photograph of, 213 ; quarrel 
with, about Ireland, 223-228 ; and 
the Albert Memorial, 228, 229 ; 
death of Mrs. Carlyle, 230, 231 ; 
letters to Gavan Duffy in Australia, 
232-239, 242-252; in 1880, 252-255 ; 
R 



258 



INDEX. 



Carlyle, T. (continued) 

death of, 256. See also " Letters," 
"Conversations." 

Carlyle, Mrs., " Letters and Memo- 
rials of," 2-4; letter from, 8-10; 
and the horse "LaiTy," 98; and 
Mazzini, 109, no ; and Mrs. Mill, 
169 ; how vol. i. ' ' French Revolu- 
tion " was burnt, 169, 170 ; in 1853, 
187 ; at House of Commons, 190 ; 
letter from, 214, 215 ; and Lord 
Rector of Edinburgh University, 
219 ; and George Sand, 222 ; sud- 
den death of, 230, 231 ; John 
Forster and, 239-242 

Carlyle, township of, in Australia, 
202, 204 

Carnarvon, Lord, 250 

Carrickshock, 49 

Castlereagh, Lord, 41 

Catholic Church of Ireland, 165, 226 

Catholics, Scotch, intolerance to- 
wards, 2, 3 

Chapman, Frederick, 213 

Chelsea philosophy, the, 105-107 

Churches in Ireland, 189 

Civilisation," Buckle's " History of, 
Carlyle and, 107-109 

Clare, county, 120 

Clarendon, Lord, 31, 152 

Cloyne, priests in, 28 

Cobden, Richard, 171 ; death of, 218 

Coleraine friend, a, 154, 156, 157 

Coleridge, the poet, 55, 58-61 

Coleridge's brother, 60 

Colleges in Ireland, 164, 165 

Conciliation Hall, Dublin, 19, 23 

Conversations with Thomas Carlyle. 
See Browning, R. ; Buckle ; Burke, 
E. ; Coleridge; Disraeli ;• Forster, 
W. E.; Forster, J.; Helps, Sir A.; 
Henry VIII. ; Jeffrey, F. ; Lander, 
W. S. ; Linton, W. J.; Macready ; 
Mazzini; Mill, J. S.; Murray, Dr.; 
O'iMeill, Miss; Parkes,, Sir H.; 
Sand.G. ; Stephen, Sir Jas.; Taylor, 
Sir H. ; Wordsworth, &c. 

Cooke, George, 214 

Coolun, a (Irish air), 159 

Coppin, Mr., 208 

Cork, Carlyle at, 95, 96 

Criticism on books, Carlyle and, 91 

" Cromwell," Carlyle's, 9, 12-15, 22, 
34. 41. 91 



Dalley, W. B., 210 

Darling, Governor, 237 

Davis, Thomas, 10, 139 

Deasy, R. , 193 

Dickens, Charles, 74, 75, 'jj, 78 ; 
Life of, 245, 246 

Dillon, John, 193 

Dispute with Carlyle, 223-228 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 179, 180, 219 

DoUinger, Dr., 69 

Donegal, Carlyle at, 122-124 

" Downing Street" pamphlet, 153- 
156 

Doyle, Richard, on Thackeray, 77 

Drogheda, 22 

Dublin, 15, 16, 22, 23, 45 

Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, first acquaint- 
ance with Thomas Carlyle, 1-4 ; 
letters from Carlyle about Ireland, 
5-8, 10-15 ; ^ri'i Carlyle's first visit 
to Ireland, 15-23 ; marriage of, 
28-30; imprisonment of, 31, 32; 
Carlyle's second visit to Ireland, 
33-50 ; and the Nation, 127, 135- 
145 ; and J. S. Mill, 171 ; Small 
Proprietors' Society, 171-175 ; 
enters Parliament, 179 ; at Mel- 
bourne, 201-214; return to London, 
214-221 ; dispute with Carlyle, 
223-228 ; and St. Patrick, 229, 
230 ; letters to, in Australia, 232- 
239, 242-252 ; and Carlyle in 1880, 
252-255 ; death of Carlyle, 256 

Dundrum, 21, 22 

Durham, Lord, 85. 

Dyspepsia, Carlyle and, 48, 200, 234, 
235 



Edinburgh Review, e^6; Sir J. Stephen 
in the, 78, 79 ; Dr. Murray and the, 
175-178 

Edinburgh University, Lord Rector 
of, 219, 231 

Emerson, R. W. , and "Sartor Re- 
sartus," 88, 93, 94; and "French 
Revolution," 169, 170, 201 

Emigrants, letters of introduction to, 
215, 216, 232-234 

Emigration, the A'ation and, 24, 25 

Empson, Mr., 178 

Encumbered Estates Act, 171 

England and Ireland, 27, 181-4 

Espinasse, Mr., 131, 132 



INDEX. 



259 



Evans, Miss, 223. 

Examiner, the London, in 1849, 83- 
85 

Famines in Ireland, 23-25, 30, 36, 39, 

118-124, 129, 186, 194 
Fenianism, 235 
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 43 
" Festus," poem called, loi, 102 
Fonblanque, Albany, 84 
Forster, John, 37, 65, 75, 83, 84, 183, 

199, 206, 227, 228, 236, 244, 245 ; 

and Mrs. Carlyle's letters, 239-242 ; 

letter from, 249, 250 !J m 
Forster, W. E., 23-27, 35;y42, 117, 

iiB, 123, 250 /) 

Fox, Charles, 197 
Fox, W. J. , 167 
Francis, Philip, 114, 115 
Eraser and " Sartor Resartus," 88, 89 
Free Trade, 218 
" French Revolution,'' Carlyle's, 116 ; 

how volume i. was burnt, 169, 170 
Froude, Mr., 45, 105 

GalwAY, Carlyle at, 112 ; famine in, 

121 
George IV. , 229 
Godless colleges, Carlyle and, 164, 

16s 
" Going the whole hog," 67 
Gold-diggers in Australia, 218 
Governing, Carlyle's theory of, 195 
Government in Australia, 238 
Graham, Sir James, 109 
Gully, Dr., 78, 200 
Gweedore, 123 

Harangue, an, with Irish Americans, 

181-184 
Hargreaves, 150 
Helps, Sir Arthur, 200, 201 
Henry VIII. , 103, 104 
Hertford, Marquis of, 193 
Hill, Lord George, 123, 212 
History, Lord Plunket's phrase about, 

68, 69 
History, Irish, Carlyle and, ip2, 103 
Hoey, Cashel, 116, 230 
" Hog, going the whole," the phrase, 

67 
Homestead in Kerry, a, 96-98 
House of Commons, 190 



Hunt, Leigh, 54, 86 
Huxley, Professor, and administrative 
Nihilism, 244 

iNCiDENTon the journey to Sligo, 113 
Indolence in Ireland, 147, 225 
Ireland, Carlyle and, 5-8 ; and Crom- 
well in, 12-15 i first visit of Carlyle 
to, 15-22 ; and potato blight in, 
23-27 ; second visit of Carlyle to, 
30-50 ; at Kilkenny, 71-74 ; at 
Cork, 95; a Kerry homestead, 96- 
98 ; at Limerick, 100, loi ; history 
of, 102, 103 ; at Galway and Sligo, 
112, 113; distress in, 117-124; in 
1849, 127-131, 135 ; Duffy's article 
in Nation about, 135-145 ; songs 
of, 146 ; Carlyle's article, " Trees of 
Liberty," in Nation, 145-150 ; the 
Irish problem, 157-162 ; colleges in, 
164; Church in, 165, 189; land 
question in, 171-176, 190; England 
and, 181-186 ; dispute about, 223- 
228 ; relations between Scotland 
and, 229, 230 
Irish Americans and Carlyle, 181-184 
" Irish Errors," pamphlet, 151-153 
" Irish Reminiscences," Carlyle's, 49, 
50, 71, 95-9B, 100, loi, 112, 118- 
124 
Italy, Savage Landor and, 66, 67; 
Mazzini and, 109, no 

Jeffrey, Francis, 55, 56 

Jerpoint Abbey, 49 

Jerrold, Douglas, 75 

Jervis, S. , 223 

Jewsbury, Miss, 190 

"Junius," the authorship of, 114, 115 

Kenmare, Lord, estate of, 96 
Kennedy, Dr., 44, 176 
Kerry homestead, a, 96-98 
Kildare, 44 

Kilkee (Clare county), 42 
Kilkenny, 71-73 
Killarney, 96 

Kilmacthomas, village of, 49 
Kindness of Carlyle, 187-190 

Lalor, Mr. Shine, 96, 163 
Lamb, Charles, 86 

Landlords in Ireland, 25, 26, 96, 120, 
235 



26o 



INDEX. 



Land question in Ireland, 1849, 127- 

131, 171-176, 190 
Land or, W. Savage, 64-67 
Lane, Mr. Dennv, 95, 96 
Larry, the Irish horse named, 98 
La Trobe, Col., 219 
" Latter-Day Pamphlets," Carlyle's, 

151-157 
I^emoinne, John, 195 
Letters of Thomas Carlyle, see Ire- 
land, Duffy, &c. , &c. 
Lewis, Mr. Cornewall, 178 
Limerick, Carlyle at, 100, loi 
Lindsay-Layard agitation, the, 194, 

195. 198 
Linton, W. J., 131 ; and the Nation, 

132-134 
Lockhart and " Sartor Resartus, ' 90 
" Locksley Hall," Tennyson's, 5 
London Press in 1849, the, 83-85 
Lucas, Frederick, 2, 3, 162, 166, 171, 

190 
Lynch Law, iii, 112 
Lytton, Bulwer, pamphlet by, 198, 

200, 241 

MacCarthy, D. F., 63, 64, 145 

MacDonnell, Sir Alexander, 46 

Maclise, the painter, 75 

Macready, W. C, Carlyle and son of, 
203-210 

Malvern, Duffy at, 191, 192, 198; 
Carlyle at, 199, 200 

Manchester Exafniner, the, 132 

Mazzini, Guiseppe, 69, 109-111 

Meagher, 193 

Melbourne, Duffy at, 202-210, 251, 
252 

Method of work, Carlyle's, 92, 93 

Miley, Mr. , 43 

Mill, James, 168 

Mill, John Stuart, 91, 166- 171, 235 

Mill, Mrs. J. S., 169 

Mitchel, John, 26, 27, 115, 117, 178 

Modern Art, 228, 229 

Monahan (Irish Attorney-General), 
38, 112 

Muloch, Thomas, 189 

Murray, Mr. J., and "Sartor Re- 
sartus," 90 

Murray, Dr., 175-178 

Napoleon, L., Thackeray and bust 
of. 195 



Nation, the, Carlyle and, 7, 10, 117, 
123, 127, 128, 133, 152, 158, 164, 
188 ; Linton's poem in, 133, 134 ; 
Duffy's article, "Wanted a few 
Workmen," 135-145; Carlyle's ar- 
ticle, " Trees of Liberty," 145-150 

National Portrait Gallery, 254 

Newman, Dr., 221 

Nihilism, Huxley and, 244 

O'Brien, Smith, 50 
O'Brien, Stafford, 41 
O'Connell, Daniel, 17, 23, 27 
O'Hagan, Justice, 2, 11.5, 221, 250 
O'Neill, Miss (Lady Beecher), 98, 99 
O'Neill, General Owen Roe, 15 
O'Shaugnessy, 71-73 
O'Shea, Father, and "Sartor Re- 
sartus," 88, 95, 96 
Oxford converts, 220, 221 

P , Lord, stories about, 216-218 

Palmerston, Lord, 190 

Papal aggression in Ireland, 163-165 

Paper to supersede Parliament, a, 154 

Parkes, Sir Henry, 210-214 

Parliament of 1852, 190 

Parliament, a paper to supersede, 154 

Parnell, Mr., 145 

Paupers at Westport, 118-122 

Peasant, the Irish, 185, 186 

Peel, Sir R. , and Irish Church, 165 

" Pendennis," Thackeray's, 78 

Petrie (artist), 102 

Philosophy, Carlyle's, 105-107 

Photograph of Carlyle, 213 

Phrase, " going the whole hog," 67 

Pigot, Mr., 1-4 

Pipes, Carlyle and repeal, 69, 70 

Plunket, Lord, 68, 69 

Poetry, Carlyle and, 57 

Poor Law Unions in Ireland, 36 

Portraits, Carlyle and, 92, 93 

Potato blight in Ireland, 23-25, 129, 

130 
Press, the London, in 1849, 83-85 

Quarrel with Carlyle, 223-228 
Queen's, College, Galway, 112 

Reform, Carlyle and, 196, 197 
Rents in Ireland, 157 
Repeal in Ireland, Carlyle and, 11, 
17, 27, 29 



INDEX. 



261 



Repeal pipes, Carlyle and, 69, 70, 

124-125 
Revue des Deux Mondes, 91 
Rintoul, founder of the Spectator, 85, 

146 
Russell, Lord John, 195 
Russell, Lady William, 219 

Sadlier, John, 174, 175 

St. Patrick, 229, 230 

Sand, George, 109, 222 

Sanders, G. N. , and Mazzini, no 

"Sartor Resartus," Shelley and, 64; 
Fraser and, 88-91 ; Emerson and, 
93, 94 ; Father O'Shea and, 95, 96 

Scotch accent, Carlyle's, 116 

Scotch intolerance towards Catholics, 

2, 3 
Scotland and Ireland, 229, 230 
Shee, Sergeant, 190 
Shelley, 63, 64 
Slavery in America, 220 
Sligo, the journey to, 113, 120 
Small Proprietors' Society, Duffy and, 

171-175 
Smoke, Carlyle and, 69 
" Sordello," Browning's, 62 
Spectator, the, 85, 146 
Stephen, Sir James, 78-80 
Sterling, Captain John, 24, 87, 88, 

91, 168 
Sterling, Major Antony, 88, 98, 112 
Stokes, Dr., 44, 46 
Strikes, Carlyle and, in, 112 

Tablet, the, 28 
Talfourd, Sir T. Noon, 86 
Taylor, Sir Henry, 80-82 
Taylor, Mrs., 167, 169, 170 



Tenant agitation in Ireland, 145, 155, 

157, 160-163, 166 
Tennyson, Alfred, 5 
Thackeray, W. M., 76-78, 91, 228; 

talk with, 192-200 
"The Blot on the 'Scutcheon, 

Browning's, 57 
"The Good Great Man," sonnet by 

Coleridge, 61 
"The Happy Land," poem by W. J. 

Linton, 133, 134 
" The Suicide's Argument," poem by 

Coleridge, 58, 59 
Thomson, Mr., 219 
Times, the, 153, 154, 156 ; Captain 

Sterling and, 87 
Tobacco, Carlyle and, 69 
"Trees of Liberty," article by Carlyle 

in Nation, 145-150 
Twistleton, 39, 41, 43 

Vere, Aubrey de, 36, 39 
Vichy and dyspepsia, 234, 235 
Victoria, Queen, and the Albert 
Memorial, 229 

" Wanted, a few Workmen," article 

in Nation, 135-145 
Westminster Palace, 228 
Westminster Review, \}a&, in, 222, 238 
Westport, Carlyle at, 118, 119, 121, 122 
Wexford, Carlyle and, 39 
Wilson, Sir Robert, 65 
Wiseman, Cardinal, 163-165 
Wood, Sir Charles, 194 
Woodfall, 114 
Wordsworth, 53-55 
Workhouse at Kilkenny, 72, 73; at 

Westport, 118, 119 



Boofe ig tije same ^utjor. 



YOUNG IRELAND 

A FRAGMENT OF IRISH HISTORY. 



From The TIMES. 

' ' The gifted and ill-fated Party of Young Ireland certainly deserved an 
Apologia, and it is past dispute that no one could be more competent for 
the task than Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. Notwithstanding the genuine 
modesty with which he always attributes the origin of the school (for, in 
the true sense, it was a school rather than a party) to Thomas Davis, he will, 
we think, be always regarded as its true founder. . . . The literary quality 
of the book is remarkable ; the style is vivid and graphic." 

From The SATURDAY REVIEW. 

' ' Sir Charles Duffy has many qualifications for his task. With great 
ability and much literary experience he combines an earnest belief in the 
justice of his cause ; and it may be added that he always writes in the 
language and the spirit of a gentleman." 

From The EDINBURGH REVIEW. 

" These, it seems, were the founders, heroes, and martyrs of the Nation, 
and we are free to confess that the Young Ireland of those days had incom- 
parably more patriotism, eloquence, and energy than their degenerate 
successors. But even Ireland cannot produce an inexhaustible supply of 
Davises and Duffys. It is in the nature of all human things — ' In pejus 
ruere et retro sublapsa referri.' " 

From The DUBLIN REVIEW. 

• ' The remarkable and romantic career of the author serves to stimulate 
the curiosity of the public ; but, independently of these advantages, this 
book contains literary merit of too high an order, and historical matter of 
too great value, to allow of its being, under any circumstances, ignored or 
forgotten." 

From The IRISHMAN. 

" Time after time the author returns to describe, or recall his friends, and 
every time with a new tenderness and renewed affection — an affection in 
which we surely can share, who are the heirs of the fruits of their heart's 
toil. So OssiAN recalled the companions of his glorious days, the knightly 
DiARMUiD, and Oscar ' of the gold-deeds.' " 



BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 

Forty-First Edition. 

From The DUBLIN REVIEW, 1846. 

"Our readers will hardly require, on our part, any profession of the un- 
affected satisfaction with which we welcome this delightful volume. It is 
a great step towards the realisation of that fond dream of a National 
Literature, which we have long cherished. We would fain believe that 
Mr. Duffy's eloquent and earnest Introduction represents the feelings of a 
large section of the educated public in Ireland. It would be difficult to 
speak too highly of this Introduction — equally difficult, we trust, to over- 
estimate its influence. Without reading one word of the volume, every 
educated man will at once pronounce that a collection made by such an 
editor must possess merit of the very highest order. We regard it, indeed, 
as perfect in its kind — correct, yet calm, passionate, but subdued — and 
combining enthusiasm and order with that tolerance which makes enthusiasm 
amicable, and that practical sense which prevents ardour from evaporating 
in noisy and ineffective display." 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF IRISH HISTORY. 



From The SPECTATOR. 

" We need not say that we cannot always agree in the drift of Sir Charles 
Gavan Duffy's political criticism. It is a very powerful, and for the most 
part a very just indictment against the Irish policy of Great Britain. The 
brief review of Irish history is one of the most vigorous and one of the most 
painful ' acts of accusation ' against this country which was ever penned, 
and for English readers one of the most wholesome lessons." 

From The FREEMAN'S JOURNAL (Dublin). 

" We read it through twice in the large edition, and we are reading it 
through now in its separate form, and it seems to us on the third reading 
what it seemed on the first. We regard it as the most fascinating chapter 
in a very fascinating book, as a masterpiece of luminous condensation, and 
as a gem of historic writing." 

From The AGE (Melbourne). 

" As a plea for Irish Home Rule, nothing more brilliant than the chapter 
entitled 'A Bird's-Eye View of Irish History,' has ever been printed." 




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